Plastics
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.
Most synthetic plastics come from crude oil but coal and natural
gas is also used. When crude oil is refined gasses are given off
. The gasses are broken down into Monomers. These 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.
