Poly- means many, so like a string of pearls, a polymer is a string of chemically bonded monomers: amino acids in proteins, sugars in polysaccharides, strands of nylon and
… polyacetate, polypropylene, and let us not neglect or omit DNA [polynucleotides] and Rna. A polymer is a chemical compound or mixture of compounds consisting of repeating structural units created through a process of polymerization. The units comprising polymers derive, actually or conceptually, from molecules of low relative molecular mass. The terms polymer and polymeric material encompass very large, broad classes of compounds, both natural and synthetic, with a wide variety of properties. Because of the extraordinary range of properties of polymeric materials, they play an essential and ubiquitous role in everyday life, from those of familiar synthetic plastics and other materials of day-to-day work and home life, to the natural biopolymers that are fundamental to biological structure and function. (MORE) 