Sodium Silicate Polymer Lab

Sodium Silicate Polymer Lab

Today we will be combining sodium silicate (Na2Si3O7) with ethyl alcohol (CH3CH2OH) to create a polymer.

Hypothesis: This polymer will be stronger than the polymer we made last Friday because the sodium hydroxide is a stronger base, so this will make the polymer stronger. There will be many other differences because this polymer is not going to bond through cross-linking.

Procedures: To create a polymer with ethyl alcohol and sodium silicate, start out by measuring 12 mL of sodium silicate solution and pour it into a beaker. Try to keep it away from your skin. The measure 3 mL of ethyl alcohol in another small beaker. Slowly pour the alcohol into the sodium silicate. Use your stirring rod to stir the mixture together until it forms a solid. Place the polymer in your hand, and press the solid together. Try to make it into a spherical ball that doesn’t crumble. If you need to moisten the ball, add a little bit of water to it. Try to bounce the ball.

Data and Analysis:

This is me pouring the sodium silicate in the ethyl alcohol. The sodium silicate was a viscous liquid. We had to use the stirring rod to get all of it out of the graduated cylinder.

This is a diagram I drew of the polymer being transformed into a solid with a stir in a matter of seconds.

Shelby, with her epic snowman nails, is mixing the sodium silicate and the alcohol. It turned into a solid quickly.

After many tries, we finally got into a solid sphere. At first we got the mixture into a little pebble sized ball, but using a paper towel helped to make it into a larger ball. When the polymer crumbled in my hand, it felt grainy. The little brown specks in the larger ball is little pieces of paper towel that got stuck to it. For the bounce test, this ball bounced very high. It was actually bouncier than I had expected it to be!

Questions:
1. What characteristics are similar between your two types of polymers you have made? Differences?
The color between the two were the same because they were both white. Pretty much everything else was different. The texture of the slime polymer was sticky and gooey. The texture of this polymer was hard. The polymer on Friday was on the verge of being a liquid, but this polymer was a firm solid. The polymer today crumbled in your hands, but the other one was easy to mold.

2. Most commercial polymers are carbon based. What similar properties do carbon and silicon share that may contribute to their abilities to polymerize?
Carbon and silicon are in the same family in the periodic table. Carbon is directly above silicon. They both have the same amount of valence electrons. That means that they bond with other atoms in the same way. They both make four chemical bonds.

3. Plastics are made of organic (carbon based) polymers. What similarities does the silicone polymer share with the plastics?
The silicone polymer and the carbon polymer were both solids.

4. How do you know that a chemical reaction had taken place when the two liquids were mixed?
The texture changed rapidly. All the liquid was put into the solid, so virtually all the alcohol held it together.

5. How could you find out what liquid was pressed out of the mass of crumbled solid as you formed the ball?
When you pressed the ball, it crumbled like feta cheese. The alcohol oozed out, and it irritated my hand a little, so I knew that it was alcohol.

6. Compare your ball with those of the other members of the class. How many properties can you compare? List and compare them.
Our ball was not as big as the others in our class. I noticed that the bigger balls bounced more than the smaller balls.

Conclusion: This lab deepened my understanding of polymers. My hypothesis was accepted because this polymer was stronger than the other polymer. This is because the sodium hydroxide provided a stronger base for the polymer to form. I learned that not all polymers have to be made by cross-linking. The reason that carbon and silicon form somewhat similar polymers is because they have very similar properties. Silicon and carbon can branch out to create long chains. When the alcohol and silicate were combined, the sodium silicate linked to form long chains. This polymer was very bouncy. It was very hard to form this polymer into a ball, though. I would love to make more polymers with different ingredients. I want to compare this to a real bouncy ball, and see the process that it is made in. In conclusion, I learned a lot about polymers in this lab, and I had fun in the process.