Question

Cotton is a natural polymer. What is its chemical name?

Answer 1

Hint: Answer to this question is based on the fact that the chemical name of the cotton is a polysaccharide and is made of glucose monomer and the polymer name leads to the correct answer.

Complete step by step answer:
In the concepts of basic chemistry we have studied about the raw materials and the monomers used to make the polymer which is called polymerisation.

Let us now study in detail about what is polymerisation.
- Polymerisation is the process where one or more than one type of monomer is bound together to form polymers.
- Polymerisation is carried out in many ways. The monomer units used for the polymerisation process can be naturally occurring monomers or can also be man-made.
- Most of the monomers are found naturally.
-Among these monomer glucose is one which condenses together to form a polymer unit which is named as cellulose.
- Cellulose is actually the polymer which occurs naturally. This is mainly obtained from the plant wood and its derivatives like grasses, water plants etc.,
- Cellulose helps the plants to remain stiff and strong and as a source of fibre its importance exists in dietary form.
Cotton consists of a long chain of glucose molecules and thus occurs naturally in plants and thus it is composed of pure cellulose which is the naturally occurring polymer.
Thus, the correct answer is that the chemical name of cotton is cellulose.

Note: Note that cellulose is the main abundant organic polymer which is primarily used to produce paper and paperboard and not just cotton and do not think that this is the only natural polymer with the chemical name cellulose.