WhyStarsMoreMonodisperse
Suppose you are trying to explain to an honors freshman chemistry class why star
polycondensation polymers are more monodisperse than ordinary, linear polycondensates. What
would you say? (As a point of reference, remember that w/n = 1 - f-1 where f is the arm
functionality.)
It is like anything else with a distribution, and might actually be related to the Central
Limit Theorem (a Golden Oldie from some math class, right?). Anyway, I’m too lazy to
Google the CLT.
Here’s the deal. The little blobs below could represent villages, towns, cities and
metropolitan areas, respectively. Or they could represent paint splatters. Or polymers.
The point is…when you look at them one by one, they are quite different. Yet, when I
draw the dotted lines to group them together, they are all identical.