Plastic

Try getting through a day without touching something made of plastic. This flexible friend can be molded into shape, and then sets solid. It is used to make many of the things we use every day.

By the way... In addition to Bakelite, I also patented about 50 other inventions, including types of electric insulation, synthetic resin, and photographic paper. The MOLDABLE MATERIAL that shaped the world

Leo Baekeland received the US patent for his invention in 1909.

Fantastic plastic

Bakelite was heatproof and did not conduct electricity.

People have used natural materials, such as rubber and tortoiseshell, for thousands of years, shaping them into hard-wearing objects. In 1905, Belgian-born chemist Leo BaekeLand mixed phenol (a disinfectant) with formaldehyde (a preservative) and came up with Bakelite, the first completely human-made plastic. This versatile material can be molded into shape, but sets hard and doesn’t melt easily. It was used to make music records, furniture, jewelry, and this radio cover.

It couldn’t have happened without...

Around 1600 bCe, people in Mesoamerica played games with rubber balls made from latex—a natural plastic found in rubber trees. American Charles Goodyear invented vulcanization in 1839, which made rubber stretchy but also able to bounCe

Bakelite proved so handy that chemists rushed to make new and even more useful plastics. In the 1930s, American chemist

Wallace carothers produced the first completely human-made fiber, nylon. In the same decade, newly invented Perspex was taking the place of glass and polythene began to be used in packaging. Soon, plastics were finding more and more uses.

Nylon stockings became a popular replacement for silk during the 1940s.

HOW Plastics are polymers— materials made of molecules that consist IT WO R KS of thousands or millions of atoms. Polymers are made by joining together small molecules (monomers) in a repeating structure that forms very long chains. Many different molecules can be used, and they can be combined in a variety of different ways—this is why there are so many types of plastic.

Ethene molecule (monomer)

Several ethene molecules join together to form polythene (a common type of plastic).

English inventor

AlexAnder PArkes made a semisynthetic plastic called PArkesine in 1856, used to make a variety of domestic objects.

Going green

Today, plastic is everywhere—from the packaging of your food to the rubber duck in your bathtub.

Most plastics are produced from How it changed the wor ldoil, a limited resource, and can takes centuries to decompose once discarded. bioplastics made from organic material are now being developed as a green alternative to oil-based plastics. Plastic is lightweight, cheap, tough, difficult to break, and doesn’t rot. No wonder it’s absolutely everywhere: in packaging, toys, furniture, computers, and clothing. But because it doesn’t rot, garbage bins are full of plastic that will take hundreds of years to break down.