TABLE OF CONTENTS Plastics were originally seen as substitute products for traditional materials such as metal and wood. However, now they have become as irreplaceable as the classic materials themselves. Plastics have managed this achievement because of their unique versatility and the ability to tailor their properties, which other materials cannot match. Our modern everyday life would be inconceivable without plastics. The use of plastics enables us to solve problems that are insoluble with the classic materials, whether it be to name only a few examples in electronics, light engineering, medical technology, space technology or machine and vehicle manufacture.
Plastics are made up of polymers and other materials that are added to them to give the desired characteristics. Natural polymeric materials such as rubber, shellac and gutta percha have a long history as raw materials for man. The first thermoplastic, celluloid, was also manufactured from a natural product, from cellulose. Even today, there are still some cellulose based plastics, i.e., the cellulose acetates (CA). Cellulose is already composed of the large molecules that are characteristic of plastics (macromolecules). However, to manufacture CA plastics, they still have to be prepared with acetic acid. The first injection moulding machine was built and patented in 1872 in order to mould cellulose materials.
Today the vast majority of plastics are manufactured artificially, i.e., the macromolecules are built up from smaller molecules (predominantly from carbon and hydrogen). Basically, plastics can also be manufactured from their basic constituents, carbon and hydrogen (coal and water). For economic reasons, however, similar...
