Yr.10. Unit 02. Plastics

​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.