I just bought a curl scrunching gel during a hair product shopping spree only to get home and noitce "copolymer" listed fairly high up in the ingredients. When I was younger there were ads for pans or something that bragged about using some kind of "space age copolymer coating" which makes me think I should return this stuff. But a gardner friend told me that copolymers retain water, release it slowly throughout the day and help your grass and plants grow without being toxic.

Obviously, I'm not trying to grow grass on my head, I'm just trying to find a way to define very tightly curlly/ coily hair African American hair that is transitioning from relaxed to natural. Should I take it back or is it to my advantage to use it? Are there other ingredients I should look for or avoid for curl defining products? - thanks!

Copolymer is a generic term, like "vegetables" - more specific than just "food" but still pretty generic. Same for copolymers. The ones used in hair care would be different than the ones used in coatings for cookware or water release gardening products. In a scrunching gel - the copolymer is a key ingredient. It will reduce volume and fly-away generally although some can increase volume. It lets the hair stands in each curl lay together and more or less parallel to each other. This lets the light bounce off in the same general direction and improves shine. These copolymers are not permanent coatings and should wash off in the next shampooing. A copolymer is a molecule made of two different "parts" and those parts can be repeated many times within the colpolymer. For example, if we had parts A and B a copolymer could be AAAAAAABBBBBB or ABABABABAAB or AAAABBBAAA, random placing, etc . The A and B parts are placed and repeated as needed to get the properties desired.