Polymers:
Formaldehyde's funny stuff. It's naturally a gas. If you put too much of it in solution, it will polymerize and form a polyacetal, "paraformaldehyde," which is just -O-CH2- repeating over and over....
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Posted on August 28, 2007 6:58 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Inulin is polymeric fructose:...
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Posted on April 18, 2007 8:29 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The pet food recall scare continues unabated; a couple weeks ago, people were pointing at aminopterin, a folic acid analogue, which was covered here. Now, people are pointing fingers at melamine as a potential contaminant....
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Posted on April 5, 2007 7:33 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Yesterday's entry on epichlorohydrin got us halfway to an epoxy resin, with the aid of good old bisphenol A. In that other tube, you'll often find some sort of amine, which, when mixed with a prepolymer like that formed with...
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Posted on March 22, 2007 9:00 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Yesterday's entry on epoxides may have brought to mind epoxies. The similarity isn't a coincidence. Chloromethylepoxide, or "epichlorohydrin," is the basis for many epoxy adhexives....
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Posted on March 21, 2007 9:00 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
PET is an ubiquitous plastic. You've heard it referred to as "dacron", "mylar," or just "polyester." It it produced by (among other methods) the condensation of terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol: PET is all over, from soft drink bottles to...
Posted on October 17, 2006 9:00 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
(Oops, this should have been published on Tuesday. I didn't click publish. Sorry!) Certain bacteria, under certain conditions, will excrete plastic. The one above is a polybutyrate, but many are possible. This is neat, first of all, because it's bizzare....
Posted on September 28, 2006 12:00 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Inspired by Keith's comment on polylactic acid's tendency to deform under heat, and procrastination, I just did a quickie test of the heat-deformation characteristics of my polylactic acid bottle. I took my PLA bottle and a cute little PET bottle...
Posted on September 27, 2006 6:43 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This weekend I came across Biota brand spring water, which is the normal expensive kind of spring water (the kind where they make a point of saying where in the earth it came from rather than obfuscating the "municipal source"...
Posted on September 25, 2006 7:02 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It's hard to overemphasize the effect WW2 had on science. I'm not just talking about atomic bombs or the ensuing cold war. A huge part of WW2 was shortages of just about everything. Textiles were especially susceptible, because their civilian...
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Posted on August 22, 2006 8:16 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Molecules: You'd better learn to live with them.
