The Polymer Cinema

Teflon Dynamics- Have not viewed this yet.

Poly(isobutylene) (Center for Scientific Computing- Finland)

Reptation Dynamics and Star Polymer Dynamics (Leeds)

Hele-Shaw (Boston U.- Eshel Ben-Jacob)- This image, created as part of the Dance of Chance exhibit, was created by filling a 1/80 inch space between to plastic plates with glycerol and then injecting air into the space. Food coloring is used to elucidate the ``fingering'' pattern produced.

A morph of micrographs that show polyoxymethylene molded at room temperature, 80 C and 120 C The pictures that were morphed are optical micrographs of microtom cuttings that were taken out of tensile test bars. It is shown how the thickness of the skin and the transition zone are effected by the mold temperature. At 20 C mold temperature the skin is relative thick (blue transparent zone ca.: 25 =B5m), at 80 C the skin is quite thin (green/yellow transparent zone ca.: 9.1 =B5m) and at a mold temperature of 120 C no skin is visible. The transition zone exhibits the same trend. A thickness of 254, 196 and 11 =B5m for the mold temperatures 20, 80 and 120 C respectively can be measured. Responsible for the formation of a skin on the bars is the cooling process. The more rapidly the mould is cooled down the less time rests for the material to crystalize and form superstructures such as spherulites. More information available on the morphology of POM and its tribology.






Last Update- September 4, 1995- wld