This is just a short note to remind chemistry students to consider taking a class on polymer chemistry if it is available. While the endless collection of widgets made from synthetic polymers may seem to be tedious as hell, the chemistry and engineering of commodity polymers is really quite fascinating and maybe just a little artsy.

Polyolefin chemistry got very interesting with the development of metallocene catalysts in the 1990s and were later refined to non-metallocene constrained geometry catalysts. Do a keyword search of Catalysts for olefin polymerization in Google Patents and see for yourself. You’ll find that Group IV metals are heavily represented.