Know your Plastics Series: Polymers
Plastic is everywhere! Plastic is in everything! Plastic has pervaded every aspect of human existence and is as commonplace as the sand on the seashore. Its benefits are numerous and have been discussed in some detail in the preceding article in the Know Your Plastics Series ( Click here to read ). However, its major disadvantage is improper disposal and recycling of plastics when discarded. To recycle plastic material more effectively and efficiently, one must understand the components and constituents of each plastic-type, known as polymers What is a Polymer? Hermann Staudinger, an organic chemistry professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Zurich in the 1920s is the “Father of Modern Polymer development”. His discoveries in macromolecular chemistry earned him the 1953 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Monomers in a Polymer A polymer is any natural or synthetic substance made of multiple, identical, repetitive units of smaller molecules, AKA monomers, which are bonded tog