Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 What Are Polymers?.................................
Polymers are our molecular views on certain chemical substances. The views have
been established in our long-lasting exploration and exploitation of materials in
nature. The term “polymers” is commonly used to describe a broad range of
materials, from synthetic materials, such as plastics, rubbers, fibers, coatings,
filtration membranes, adsorption resins and adhesives; to natural materials, such
as cellulose, starches, natural rubbers, silks, hairs, and chitins; and even to the
prototypes of bio-macromolecules, such as DNA, RNA and proteins, which are the
basic substances for highly diverse creatures.
There is a long history for us to recognize polymers. Let us start with the early
evolution of our molecular views (Rupp 2005 ). As early as in the middle of 500 BC,
the Greek philosopher Leucippus and his follower Democritus suggested that, an
indivisible minimum substance called atoms constituted our world. Almost at the
same time, Empedocles proposed that the world was formed by four elements, i.e.,
water, air, fire, and earth. Later on, Plato set up the Academy at Athens, inherited
the atomic theory, and also advocated the four-element theory on the basis of the
formal logic system of geometries.
In the next 2,000 years, the alchemists discovered more and more elements. Till
to eighteenth century, Lavoisier named the elements of oxygen and hydrogen, and
proved the mass conservation in chemical reactions (Lavoisier et al. 1783 ). This
milestone delivered the birth of chemistry. At the beginning of nineteenth century,
Dalton proposed that each molecule contains a fixed ratio of atoms among several
elements (Dalton 1808 ). This theory was another milestone that opened the gate to
modern chemistry. Since then, the atomic and molecular theory became the main
stream of chemistry.
In the field of physics, in 1880s, Boltzmann invented statistical thermodynamics
according to the Maxwell’s theory of the motions of atoms (Boltzmann 1872 ). In
1905, Einstein elucidated that the stochastic Brownian motions of atoms are mainly
W. Hu,Polymer Physics, DOI 10.1007/978-3-7091-0670-9_1,
#Springer-Verlag Wien 2013
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