Disadvantages of Plastics are
1. FLAMMABLE – This is definitely an advantage in that they can be melted down, however soldering plastics can release toxic fumes into the environment.
2. COST OF RECYCLING – While recycling is a plus, recycling is a very costly endeavour.
3. VOLUME – In the United States 20% of our landfill is made up of plastics. As more products are being made of plastics, where will this lead us in the future?
4. DURABILITY – This is an advantage as well as a disadvantage. Plastics are extremely durable, which means that they last a long time. Those plastics in the landfill will be there for years.
Plastics make our lives easier, however is their cost on the environment worth it? We can only hope that soon someone will invent a way to safely and cheaply melt and reuse plastics.
The word plastic is derived from the Greek πλαστικός (plastikos) meaning capable of being shaped or molded, from πλαστός (plastos) meaning molded.[1][2] It refers to their malleability, or plasticity during manufacture, that allows them to be cast, pressed, or extruded into a variety of shapes—such as films, fibers, plates, tubes, bottles, boxes, and much more.
OVERVIEW
Plastics can be classified by chemical structure, namely the molecular units that make up the polymer's backbone and side chains. Some important groups in these classifications are the acrylics, polyesters, silicones, polyurethanes, and halogenated plastics. Plastics can also be classified by the chemical process used in their synthesis, such as condensation, polyaddition, and cross-linking.
CHEMICAL STRUCTURE
Common thermoplastics range from 20,000 to 500,000 amu, while thermosets are assumed to have infinite molecular weight. These chains are made up of many repeating molecular units, known as repeat units, derived from monomers; each polymer chain will have several thousand repeating units. The vast majority of plastics are composed of polymers of