Ideal Polymer Chain: Size and Conformation

This lecture covers the theoretical treatment of the size and conformation of an ideal polymer chain, exploring concepts such as chain rigidity, polymer conformation, energy landscape, contour length, and polymer flexibility. It delves into the relationship between chain flexibility, bond angles, and bond rotation, as well as the characteristic ratio in chain rigidity. The presentation progresses to discuss the end-to-end distance, radius of gyration, and the freely rotating chain model. Additionally, it examines the deviations from ideal-chain behavior in real polymer chains, the representation of real chains by equivalent freely-jointed chains, and the Kuhn segment length as a measure of chain stiffness.