Energy & Green Tech
Since the 1950s, human beings have generated at least 6.3 billion tons of plastic waste. However, only 9 percent of this waste has been recycled and only 12 percent utilized as fuel. The remaining 79 percent has been dumped, ...
Jun 10, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
Parked a few feet from the iconic pagoda at Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a reimagined E-Z-Go golf cart that's essentially filled with garbage. Plastic bottles tossed into recycling bins months ago are now neatly stacked ...
May 29, 2022
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Engineering
Rice University chemists working with researchers at the Ford Motor Company are turning plastic parts from "end-of-life" vehicles into graphene via the university's flash Joule heating process.
May 26, 2022
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Machine learning & AI
Plastic pollution is a major global issue but grasping the scale of the problem can be challenging. In a recent study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from the University of Tsukuba developed a novel method for ...
May 12, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
In the United States, 11 million metric tons of textile waste go into landfills every year. But what if we could make that waste disappear?
Apr 25, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
Stephen Mayfield, a molecular biology professor at UC San Diego, now has a stake in the business of footwear alongside partners Michael Burkart and Robert Pomeroy from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. After six ...
Apr 22, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
Plastic pollution has become an alarming problem worldwide. A 2015 study published in Science Magazine projected that by 2025, around 100–250 million metric tons of plastic waste could enter our oceans every year.
Apr 14, 2022
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Software
3D printers may soon get better at producing intricate metal and plastic parts, thanks to new software developed at the University of Michigan that reduces harmful heat buildup in laser powder bed fusion printers.
Apr 8, 2022
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534
Energy & Green Tech
Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a new method for plastic waste to be converted into hydrogen based on pyrolysis, a high temperature chemical process.
Apr 8, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—which one of us (Arunima) contributed to—has emphasized the need for enormous change if we are to keep within the 1.5℃ warming limit.
Apr 8, 2022
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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
