PLASTICS

                                    DEFINITION OF PLASTIC

Plastics are man-made materials. Plastics have taken the place of traditional materials like woods and metals.

Plastics differ from other materials largely because of the size of their molecules. Most materials have molecules made up of less than 300 atoms, plastics contain thousands of atoms. We call them Macromolecules.

Some plastics are derived from natural substances such as animals, insects and plants but most are man-made. These are named Synthetic Plastics. The first plastic based on a synthetic polymer was made from phenol and formaldehyde, with the first viable and cheap synthesis methods invented by Leo Hendrik Baekeland in 1909, the product being known as Bakelite.

Most synthetic plastics come from crude oil but coal and natural gas is also used. 

Monomers are chemical substances consisting of a single molecule. Thousands of these are linked together in a process called Polymerisation to form new compounds called Polymers. They are composed of organic condensation or addition polymers and may contain other substances to improve performance or economics. The vast majority of plastics are composed of polymers of carbon and hydrogen alone or with oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine or sulfur.