Skip to main content

What You Must Know About Plastic

Plastic is the general common term for a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials used in a huge, and growing, range of applications (PlasticsEurope, 2015). In chemistry, plastics are large molecules, called polymers, composed of repeated segments, called monomers, with carbon backbones (Lytle, 2015). Plastic is readily available and contained in almost everything we touch. Plastic is found in clothes, houses, cars, toys, televisions, computers, and even compact disks (CDs). Also, plastic refers to material’s plasticity/malleability, during manufacture; allowing for casting, pressing, or extrusion. The resultant is a variety of shapes like boxes, bottles, plates, and the like.
Types of Plastic
Plastic could be categorized into thermoplastics and thermosetting plastics. Thermoplastics refers to the category of plastic that can be heated up to form products, and can be reheated again (melted). New products could then be formed from the melted plastic. Thermoset plastics on the other hand cannot be remelted after a product has been created. In summary:
·        Thermoplastics soften on heating and re-harden on cooling.
·        Thermosets never soften once they have been molded.

Examples of Thermosets
Examples of Thermoplastics
Epoxide (EP)
Polycarbonate – PC
Polyurethane (PUR)
Polyethylene – PE
Phenol-formaldehyde (PF)
Polypropylene – PP
Polytetrafluoroethylene - PTFE
Polystyrene –PS
Unsaturated polyester resins (UP)
Expanded Polystyrene - EPS

Poly (vinyl chloride) – PVC

Poly (methyl methacrylate) -PMMA

Polyethylene Terephthalate - PET

Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene - ABS

Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene - ABS

References

History of Plastics. (2015). Retrieved May 21, 2015, from SPI - The Plastics Industry Trade Association: www.plasticsindustry.org
Knight, L. (2014, May 17). A Brief History of plastics, natural and synthetic. Retrieved May 16, 2015, from British Broadcasting Corporation - BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27442625
Lytle, C. L. (2015). When The Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide. Retrieved April 15, 2015, from Plastic Pollution: http://plastic-pollution.org/
North, E., & Rolf, H. (2014). Plastics and Environmental Health: The Road Ahead. Reviews on Environmental Health, 28(1), 1-8. doi:10.1515/reveh-2012-0030
PlasticsEurope. (2015). What is plastic? Retrieved May 13, 2015, from PlasticsEurope: http://www.plasticseurope.org/what-is-plastic.aspx
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Popular Posts

Princess Qajar - The Revolutionary Persian Princess

Zahra Khanom Tadj es-Saltaneh commonly referred to as Princess Qajar was a princess and memoirist of the Qajar Dynasty. Princess Tadj was one of the best known daughters of the Persian king, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar who ruled Persia from 1848 to May 1896. The Persian princess was born on February 4, 1883 and died on January 25, 1936, in Tehran, at the age of 52. Princess Qajar revolutionized beauty standards with her full look and ragged unibrow, and her unmistakably evident mustache. She was a true epitome of beauty at her time. Princess Qajar was declared a symbol of beauty in Persia and was coveted by many men. Thousands of men wanted to marry her, 13 of whom committed suicide upon being rejected by the princess. Princess Qajar eventually married Amir Hussein Khan Shoja'-al Saltaneh and had they had four children - two boys and two girls. They later got divorced in 1907 after enduring an unloving arranged marriage - she married Khan when she was 13. The princess argued f...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Lehman Brothers Scandal (2008)

Company Background : Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a firm specialized in the provision of global financial services. It was founded in Montgomery, Alabama, in the United States of America. The company had headquarters in New York City, New York, in the U.S. It ceased operations in 2008. The founders were: Henry Lehman, Emmanuel Lehman and Mayer Lehman. What Happened? Lehman Brothers hid over $50 billion in loans disguised as sales. They allegedly sold toxic assets [1] to Cayman Island Banks with the understanding that they would eventually be rebought. How they were caught : Their bankruptcy led to the discovery of the fraud. They filed for bankruptcy in 2008, which is the largest bankruptcy ever recorded. Their case was larger than that of Enron, Washington Mutual, WorldCom and GM combined.  On September 15, 2008, Lehman brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection  (Montgomery, n.d.) . Their bankruptcy filing came in as a blow to the financial indu...
1 comment
Read more

The finger-cutting tradition of Indonesia's Dani tribe

The death of a loved one is always an extremely painful thing to bear, and people of different cultures grieve in diverse ways, some more unique than others. A typically unique way of grieving is that of the Dani (an Indonesian tribe). Finger-cutting is a fundamental part of grieving for women of the Dani tribe, and pertains to their women only. According to The Globe and Mail, an estimated 250,000 Dani tribe members live in a town named Wamena, in the extremely remote central highland area of Papua Province. Wamena is only accessible by plane.  Upon the death of a loved one, the top joint of one of a woman's fingers would be amputated, and smear ashes and clay across their faces. Prior to amputation, a string would be firmly tied to the upper half of the woman's finger for 30 minutes, to cause numbness. This was to reduce the pain from amputating the tip. In most cases, the responsibility of cutting off the top joint of the finger is assigned to one of the woman's...
1 comment
Read more