Learning in small groups in university geography courses: Designing a core module around group projects

The article covers synthesis, structure and properties of thermotropic liquid-crystalline ( LC) polymers with mesogenic side groups. Approaches towards the synthesis of such systems and the conditions for their realization in the LC state are presented, as well as the data revealing the relationship between the molecular structure of an LC polymer and the type of mesophase formed. Specific features of thermo- tropic LC polymers and copolymers of nematic, smectic and cholesteric types are considered. The possibility to affect the structure of an LC polymer by the influence of electric and magnetic fields is demonstrated. The kinetics and the mechanism of structural rearrangements are discussed. The initial steps of mesophase formation in dilute solutions of polymers are examined.