Plastics: The Layman's Guide PDF

PREFACE

This book is for anyone interested in plastics. They may be professionally involved, they may be worried about the environment or fed-up with plastic packaging, or simply curious about a subject which was ignored when most of us were being educated. Those blessed with experience of the National Curriculum are unlikely to find material strictly related to any syllabus, but they may well enjoy an injection of the colour and flavour of real life.

There are no chemical formulae here, no engineering equations; just an occasional touch of polymer physics, where it helps to spread a little daylight. The emphasis is on the uses of plastics, on the multitude of applications in which plastics enrich (or complicate) our lives. There are thoughts about other ways things could be done; and there is some history, because this is so often the best key to understanding the present.

No book about plastics could avoid the big environmental issues of the day; questions about recycling, the use of resources and the like. The aim is also to give a proper hearing for the many unsung virtues of plastics, and the way in which they make possible things which were hitherto undreamed of. There is a search for balance, and for truth, insofar as either can survive undistorted in a simplified survey such as this.

Edited by: James Maxwell