Plastics Chemistry

“Plastics Chemists: Don’t Be Ashamed,” by Enrico Uva
There’s irony in having small bits of floatable plastic debris in the Pacific, even if the trash, although worrisome, doesn’t look like anything most of the public imagines. Millions of years ago, many of the hydrogen and carbon atoms within these man-made polymers were part of marine life. Death, deposition and pressure simplified the organic molecules of the dead. Then a species that indirectly evolved from these oceanic ancestors accidentally stumbled upon a crude liquid. Eventually they learned to use not only its energy content but its building blocks. Some of these were linked into molecular chains that could be molded into any shape. But these chains proved to be resistant to the usual degradative action of bacteria and fungi. Read the full article on Science 2.0.