Raissa's Blog - Best of Sports, Culture, and Entertainment

Plastics in the Automo tive  Industry All forms of automobile make extensive use of plastic. Plastic is used in seating, paneling, instrument enclosing, and surface coverings. Skateboards, bicycles, and roller blades are made from plastic (in combination with other materials used as structural elements). Plastics allow for weight reduction, innovative design, and energy absorption while improving passenger safety. Plastics are used in seatbelts, airbags, durable plastic safety seats and shock absorbers for bumpers. Plastics have gone a long way to suppress the explosion risks in fuel tanks. The connection between design innovation and plastic is illustrated by the aircraft industry. As of the 1970s, the use of plastic in airplanes has grown from 4 to all but 30%, and was expected to reach 50% by 2013!  Plastics in Home Construction The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the use of plastic foam insulation in homes and buildings each year will ultimately save clos

Plastics have overturned the sports industry in recent years. Plastics could be found on Olympic tracks, sports footwear, sports clothing, construction of stadia, and in safety equipment. Some applications of plastic in sports are thus: ·   Footwear : Plastics play a crucial role in today’s sports shoe designs, in all domains; hiking, skiing, running, jumping, and what have you? The lining of hiking shoes for example are made from loosely woven polyester material that allows for rapid evaporation of moisture from the exterior part of the boot, it also rebuffs water. Polyester foam padding is used on the insoles of sport shoes to supply more comfort.  ·   Manufacturing of toys : Plastics are champion among the thoroughly tested, well-researched, durable, flexible, and cost-efficient materials on today’s markets. Plastics have been used for close to 50 years by toymakers in producing the most popular toys for children. ·    Ballgames : Plastic is the primary component in almo

What if we could make plastics from less harsh products? This means we get rid of them much easier and in a much safer way. Most bioplastics are made from natural materials like corn starch. Some bioplastics look identical to traditional petrochemical plastics. The main ingredient in bioplastics is Polylactide acid (PLA), which looks and behaves like polypropylene and polyethylene, widely used for the production of food containers. Turning shrimp into plastic: Harvard's Wyss Institute comes up with fully degradable bioplastic Producing PLA, according to NatureWorks, saves two thirds the energy you need to produce traditional plastics. However, a problem remains, even with the advent of bioplastics. Those currently in use do not fully degrade in the environment. Also, their use is limited to packaging material or producing containers for food and drink. Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have now introduced a new bioplastic, iso

Plastics have over the past century, played a critical role in our lives. Plastic has come with its ups and downs, still rocking strong. Plastic is the material provides the things consumers want and need. Plastics are used in shopping, grocery, packaging, light weighting, home construction, and more. Modern healthcare would be a pipe dream without plastic medical products, which are often taken for granted. These include: intravenous blood bags, heart valves, disposable syringes, and the like. Thanks to the unending versatility of modern plastics, medical discoveries considered unthinkable five decades back are now ordinary. Here are some applications of plastic in medicine: ·   Prosthesis : Plastic is used in the replacement of diseased body parts, they are as well used in orthopedic devices for aligning and correcting deformities. They have the ability to improve the function of movable body parts, or completely taking over the main function of a body part. ·        Plast

Durable but slow to degrade, plastic is used in producing so many products, from beverage bottles to water bottles to containers. Humans have been using naturally derived plastic for a very long time, as far back as before Christ. The Olmecs in Mexico played with balls made of rubber – a natural polymer. It was not until the 18 th century that the first European, French explorer Charles-Marie de La Condamine, stumbled upon the rubber tree in the Amazon basin (Knight, 2014) . Only in the 1840s did the American Charles Goodyear and the British Thomas Hancock take out patents on either side of the Atlantic for ‘vulcanized’ rubber (rubber treated with sulphur for more durability). Thanks to vulcanization, the bicycle tyre was made out of rubber, followed by the motor car, and the Goodyear tyre company. The history of plastic goes as far back as when man started using wood. Why? Because half of an average piece of wood is made of cellulose (a polymer that provides plant cells their

For so many years now, the increased use of plastic in agriculture has led to an increase in crop production and quality. Plastics allow for vegetables and fruits to be grown all year round (this is very beneficial to the countries in the temperate and polar zones of the world). Plastics used in agriculture include: polyolefin, polyethylene (PE), Polypropylene (PP), Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate Copolymer (EVA), Poly-vinyl chloride (PVC), and the less commonly used Polycarbonate (PC), and poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA). Why is plastic so beneficial to agriculture then? Plastics are used in: ·       Ensilage : This is very useful during the winter season. Fodder is harvested while green and kept lush through partial fermentation in a silo. Plastic films are used in storing the silage (for their resistance). ·       Diverse applications : Plastics are also used in components for irrigation systems like spray cones (these tapes hold the aerial parts of a plant in a greenhouse). They are