Energy & Green Tech
Plans are underway in Appalachia to create two underground facilities to store ethane, a byproduct of natural gas drilling seen as integral to revitalizing a region still struggling from the loss of industrial and manufacturing ...
Apr 29, 2019
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43
Engineering
Kayak paddles, snowshoes, skateboards. Outdoor sporting goods used to be a tough market for 3-D printing to break into, but fused particle fabrication (FPF) can change that.
Apr 9, 2019
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1
Machine learning & AI
The human brain continuously changes over time, forming new synaptic connections based on experiences and information learned over a lifetime. Over the past few years, artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers have been trying ...
Computer Sciences
In recent years, researchers have developed deep neural networks that can perform a variety of tasks, including visual recognition and natural language processing (NLP) tasks. Although many of these models achieved remarkable ...
Energy & Green Tech
Officials with the Dutch city of Zwolle have announced the opening of a new bike path made using recycled plastic. The bike path is part of a nationwide effort to recycle more user end products. The bike path was made using ...
Engineering
(Tech Xplore)—MIT Rocket Team on April 21 successfully fired a rocket motor printed from plastic. They had project support from Markforged for their 3-D printed rocket motor. They put out a video to show it in action.
Energy & Green Tech
(Tech Xplore)—A team of researchers with Miniwiz has developed a mobile recycling plant called the Trashpresso that can be hauled between locations. In addition to its mobility, it's also solar powered, making it useful ...
Engineering
In this age of smartphones and tablet computers, touch-sensitive surfaces are everywhere. They're also brittle, as people with cracked phone screens everywhere can attest.
Mar 23, 2017
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130
Engineering
UC Berkeley is a leader in 3-D printing. From creating a prosthetic hand for an 8-year-old girl to a "smart cap" that senses spoiled food to large-scale cement buildings, engineers and designers on campus are pushing the ...
Feb 16, 2017
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5
Energy & Green Tech
(Tech Xplore)—Plastic container discards floating in oceans are an ugly sight and troubling environmental issue; scientists are exploring better ways to assure a cleaner future. That includes exploring materials that are ...
Plastic is the general common term for a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic organic amorphous solid materials suitable for the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular weight, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce costs.
The word derives from the Greek πλαστικός (plastikos) meaning fit for molding, and πλαστός (plastos) meaning molded. It refers to their malleability, or plasticity during manufacture, that allows them to be cast, pressed, or extruded into an enormous variety of shapes—such as films, fibers, plates, tubes, bottles, boxes, and much more.
The common word plastic should not be confused with the technical adjective plastic, which is applied to any material which undergoes a permanent change of shape (plastic deformation) when strained beyond a certain point. Aluminum, for instance, is plastic in this sense, but not a plastic in the common sense; while some plastics, in their finished forms, will break before deforming and therefore are not plastic in the technical sense.
There are two types of plastics: thermoplastics and thermosets. Thermoplastics, if exposed to enough heat, will melt. Thermosets will keep their shape until they are charred and burnt. Some examples of thermoplastics are grocery bags, piano keys and some automobile parts. Examples of thermosets are children's dinner sets and circuit boards.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
