Polystyrene and Styrofoam
by Kyle Perry
PolystyrenePolystyrene is a strong plastic created from erethylene and benzine that can be injected, extruded or blow molded, making it a very useful and versatile manufacturing material. Most of us recognize styrofoam a form of foam polystyrene packaging. Polystyrene is also used as a building material, with electrical appliances (light switches and plates), and in other household items. Polystyrene has a long history of evolution behind it. In 1839, a German apothecary called Eduard Simon discovered polystyrene. Eduard Simon isolated a substance from natural resin, however, he did not know what he had discovered. It took another German, organic chemist, Hermann Staudinger, to realize that Simon's discovery, comprised of long chains of styrene molecules, was a plastic polymer. In 1922, Staudinger published his theories on polymers, stating that natural rubbers were made up of long repetitive chains of monomers that gave rubber its elasticity. He went on to write that the materials manufactured by the thermal processing of styrene were similar to rubber. They were the high polymers including polystyrene. In 1953, Hermann Staudinger won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his research. In 1930, the scientists at BASF developed a way to commercially manufacture polystyrene. Badische Anilin
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