Chapter 1: What are Plastics?

Chapter 1: What are Plastics?

When thinking of plastic, most people think of plastic straws, plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic packaging, plastic cutlery, plastic containers, plastic toys, food wrappers, and many more things. The list may be endless. There are many reasons why so many things are made with plastic and why it’s an extremely popular material to be used for the creation of consumer items.

A world dominated by plastics raises a few questions in our curious minds that make us wonder, what are the origins of this material? This chapter explains what plastics are, the science behind how they’re created, and how they came about into this world.

The Science Behind Plastics

What are Plastics?

Plastics are extremely flexible synthetic materials that can be molded into any shape when they’re soft and when they harden up, they retain that shape. Plastics are extremely strong and durable materials. Due to their low-density, plastics are also extremely lightweight. Some plastics can be clear and some can be made into many different colors. The possibilities are endless. Due to these qualities, plastic is extremely popular with manufacturers. However, despite the many advantages, plastic also comes with many dangerous problems to the environment, human health, and wildlife.

How are Plastics Formed?

Plastics originate from fossil fuels and natural materials, such as cellulose, natural gas, coal, and crude oil. Chemists heat up these materials, causing them to break down into monomers. We all know that everything is made from atoms, which connect with each other to make molecules. A monomer is a very small molecule that easily links together with others of its kind. Think of this as linking together paper clips to create a chain.

Chemists then take these monomers and link them together to form polymers. Once a minimum of at least 1,000 monomers link together, they form chains called polymers, which are the large molecules that form plastic. This process is known as polymerizing. Essentially, a polymer is a chain made of many connected monomers, which are the individual building blocks of the chain.

The polymers created by this method are synthetic polymers, which means plastic is a man-made material, not occurring naturally in our world. There are also naturally occurring polymers in our world. Examples of some naturally occurring polymers include shellac, tar, cellulose, and amber. Plastics fall into the synthetic category of polymers.