Plastics are synthetic
petroleum derivatives. Plastics vary immensely in
temperature tolerance, hardness, resiliency and so on. Due to this, plastics see use in almost all industrial applications today. All plastics are
polymers.
History of plastics
Plastics get the name from the
thermoplasticity of cellulose nitrate, the first synthetic polymer. While it has found uses as an explosive, it was also used as a replacement for
ivory billiard
? balls. Further development produced something less explosive, using acetic acid instead of nitric acid to form cellulose acetate, which is used in
film.
Chemical composition
Chemical compositions vary widely, but most common plastics are based on
hydrocarbons extracted from
oil.
Some famous plastics
see http://www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/plastic.htm
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