The weight average molecular weight is a way of describing the molecular weight of a polymer. Polymer molecules, even if of the same type, come in different sizes (chain lengths, for linear polymers), so we have to take an average of some kind. For the weight average molecular weight, this is calculated by
where Ni is the number of molecules of molecular weight Mi.
Intuitively, if the weight average molecular weight is w, and you pick a random monomer, then the polymer it belongs to will have a weight of w on average.
The weight average molecular weight can be determined by light scattering, small angle neutron scattering (SANS), X-ray scattering, and sedimentation velocity.
Using strings of varying lengths to represent polymers of varying degrees of polymerization, students are able to calculate the number averagemolecularweight, the weightaveragemolecularweight and the polydispersity index for a "sample" with a distribution of chain lengths.
The number averagemolecularweight is the total weight (the sum of column 4) divided by the total number of "molecules" (the sum of column 2).
The weightaveragemolecularweight is the sum of column 5 divided by the sum of column 4.
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