Need help understanding diagram

Hi,
I am doining a piece of coursework of as physics on a material. I have chosen acrylic and need help understanding its internal structure. I dont understand the symbols CH2 and CH3. Any help on explaining these symbols and their bonds would be a lot of help thanks
ps i think this is do with chemistry

Reply 1

Mustard-man

18

Uncle Dave

Hi,
I am doining a piece of coursework of as physics on a material. I have chosen acrylic and need help understanding its internal structure. I dont understand the symbols CH2 and CH3. Any help on explaining these symbols and their bonds would be a lot of help thanks
ps i think this is do with chemistry

What is it that you don't understand about CH2 and CH3? :s-smilie:

C stands for carbon, H stands for hydrogen. So CH2 is on carbon bonded to two hydrogen, but obviously C needs to fill its electron shell, so it gets two more electrons from the two carbons next to it. These are covalent bonds. This is similar with CH3, except the bottom ones are bonded to oxygen, which makes it an ester bond. The C is double bonded to the oxygen due to the lone pair of electrons that oxygen has.

Because the same structure (-CH3(C)CH2COOCH3) is re-occurring, it is a polymer.