Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-soft-condensed-matter-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/section-a/1/c/solution
Past exam of the soft condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge 2018 Section A 1 c Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
The polymer overlap concentration is reached when there is roughly one chain per coil volume. If is the chain molar mass, choose the explicit geometric convention , where is the radius of gyration. ThenHere is mass per solution volume and is the Avogadro constant. A good solvent gives with , approximated by in the Flory approximation. With a polystyrene repeat-unit molar mass of about , the chain has approximately repeat units. This fixes the chain length but not the size amplitude: the problem supplies no statistical segment length or measured coil size.
For a numerical estimate, use the good-solvent size calibration for polystyrene,This empirical calibration is quoted for benzene or toluene near room temperature at molar masses above ; using it here is a modest extrapolation to . It gives . ThusThe unrounded calibration gives about . This is an estimate under a stated extra material input, not a unique number determined solely by molecular weight and the phrase good solvent. Choosing a different coil-volume convention changes its prefactor. The robust chain-length dependence is for a flexible good-solvent coil.
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