Today most undergraduate organic chemistry texts present some material on polymers, but the coverage in these texts is necessarily quite limited. Step-growth and free-radical chain growth systems, along with some mention of coordination polymerization, usually constitute the bulk of introductory material. Very little of the advances in polymer chemistry since the 1960's is reflected in the undergraduate curriculum. One particularly interesting topic still rarely seen outside of the research literature is the subject of metathesis polymerization. This article is intended to present the interested reader with a brief introduction to the mechanism of this unique process, its historical background, and some recent developments in the field.
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