Polímeros

All Things Related:©
A Short History and Technical Comparison of Acrylics and Other Plastics
The portable hot tub industry is notorious for using the most complex and confusing
terminology they can find for the most basic of materials. My tub is better than yours
because we use “space age polymers” versus “high impact thermoplastic resins”. So in the
interest of clarity (and simplicity), wethought we’d give you a short overview of the
subject so you can speak convincingly on the major similarities and differences between a
Palm Springs Spa and everything else.
The first term to clarify is POLYMER. A polymer is nothing more than a chemical
compound. A chemical cocktail, if you will, made up of a number of MOLECULES
linked together. And what’s a molecule? Well, as you mightremember from high school
science, a molecule is just a bunch of atoms stuck together to form something else. NaCl
is probably the most common molecule: one atom of sodium linked with one atom of
chloride to form common table salt. So are we clear so far? Polymers are just a bunch of
molecules strung together.
Many polymers occur in nature such as cellulose (plant fibers) and natural rubber. Thefirst two man-made polymers were copies of this same material. In 1839, an American
named Charles Goodyear accidentally discovered a technique in the kitchen of his small
apartment that he called VULCANIZATION. It was a way of manipulating the sap from
rubber trees by treating it with heat and sulfur to convert the gummy, springy goop (used
up to that point mainly to “rub out” or erase thingslike pencil marks) into a dry, tough,
elastic material that could make automobile tires possible. Synthetic rubber. That one
polymer alone started a whole transportation revolution.
In 1870, four years before the structure of the carbon atom was properly understood (important
because carbon is the framework for all natural and artificial polymers), another American
inventor named John WesleyHyatt won a contest to find a material to replace ivory in billiard
balls. Ivory came from an elephant’s tusk and as elephants were becoming increasingly
endangered it was becoming harder and harder to find. So it was quite a big deal when Hyatt
came up with a material he called CELLULOID based on CELLULOSE, a simple polymer that
is the basic structural material of all plants. This was thereal start of the polymer industry.
Hyatt treated a common plant cellulose called GUNCOTTON (an explosive material
made by exposing cotton plant fibers to nitric and sulfuric acids) with alcohol and
camphor. What he got was a hard, shiny material that could be molded when hot. Cheap
and uniform in consistency, this new material did indeed replace ivory in billiard balls,
though not without somenew problems of its own. For occasionally, when the celluloid
billiard balls collided, they created a small detonation like a firecracker because of the
explosive nature of cellulose nitrate, which is related to another compound called
TRINITROTOLUENE (or TNT). Celluloid also quickly replaced the animal horns used
to make combs and silverware handles and eventually was used in the firstphotographic
and movie films. That’s what so many early films caught fire and were destroyed.

In 1887, Count Hilaire de Chardonnet created a related product when he learned to spin
cellulose nitrate into Chardonnet silk, the first synthetic fiber to enter production and a
forerunner to RAYON™, NYLON™ and DACRON™.
But both celluloid and Chardonnet silk were polymers created by altering NATURALPOLYMERS, or chains of molecules already found in nature. The first truly
SYNTHETIC (or man made) POLYMER did not come along until 1909 when another
American named Leo Baekelan treated carbolic acid (a derivative of coal tar) with the
preservative formaldehyde under heat and pressure. His product, BAKELITE™, was
hard, immune to harsh chemicals, electrically insulating and heat resistant-all...