{"id":2515,"date":"2010-09-22T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T14:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=2515"},"modified":"2012-11-27T21:33:34","modified_gmt":"2012-11-28T05:33:34","slug":"where-the-word-plastic-came-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/where-the-word-plastic-came-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the Word \u201cPlastic\u201d Came From"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pf-content\"><div class=\"highlighter\">Note: This is a guest article contributed by plastics engineer and owner of <a title=\"Polymeric Life\" href=\"http:\/\/www.noahwass.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Polymeric Life<\/a>, Noah.<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/lots_of_plastic_bottles_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2516\" title=\"Plastic Bottles\" src=\"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/lots_of_plastic_bottles_o-e1284199494349.jpg\" alt=\"Plastic Bottles\" width=\"330\" height=\"262\" \/><\/a><a href='http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com' title='Interesting Facts'>Today I found out<\/a> where the word <em>plastic<\/em> came from.<\/p>\n<p>The word <em>plastic<\/em> existed long before the first plastic, Parkesine. As early as the 1600\u2019s, plastic was used as a term to relate to something that could be easily molded or shaped. Plastic is derived from the Latin word <em>plasticus<\/em> and the Greek word <em>plastikos<\/em>, both meaning \u2018able to be molded, pertaining to molding\u2019. Most likely, Greeks used plastikos to describe unhardened versions of clay.<\/p>\n<p>Fun Facts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The first plastic was developed in 1855 to replace ivory.\u00a0 A man by the name of Alexander Parkes came up with the idea, presented it at the 1862 Great Exhibition in London, and came home with third prize.\u00a0 This particular plastic was referred to as <em>parkesine<\/em>.\u00a0 Later, manufactured parts of <em>parkesine<\/em> would suffer as Parkes tried to make the manufacturing process more cost effective.\u00a0 Xylonite would later replace <em>parkesine<\/em> as a more stable material.<\/li>\n<li>Alexander Parkes holds a total of 66 patents.<\/li>\n<li>The first synthetic plastic was invented in 1909 by Leo Hendrik Baekeland and was called Bakelite.\u00a0 It was developed from phenol and formaldehyde (what a lovely combo!). Bakelite is considered the first true plastic because it is synthetic (not based on any natural material).<\/li>\n<li>Plastics, as we refer to them today, are mainly derived from a petroleum source; oil that has been taken from the Earth, broken down, and parts of that oil are then used to make plastic.<\/li>\n<li>The Bic pen is made of polystyrene plastic and was first manufactured in 1950. To date, there have been more than 100 billion of these pens manufactured.<\/li>\n<li>The first form of plastic molding was casting. This process typically involves two female molds clamped together. A liquid material (in our case, plastic) is then poured into the mold.<\/li>\n<li>On average, Americans use about four million plastic bottles per hour, about 27% of which get recycled for an annual recycle rate of about 2.4 billion pounds of plastic from plastic bottles per year.<\/li>\n<li>It takes only five recycled two liter bottles to make enough fiberfill for one ski jacket.<\/li>\n<li>It takes about 1000 recycled milk jugs to make a six foot park bench.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<span class=\"collapseomatic \" id=\"id69efe54edc1ba\"  tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Expand for References:\"    >Expand for References:<\/span><div id=\"target-id69efe54edc1ba\" class=\"collapseomatic_content \">\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"Etymology of Plastic\" href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/index.php?search=plastic&amp;searchmode=none\" target=\"_blank\">Etymology of Plastic<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Plastic\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Plastic\" target=\"_blank\">Plastic<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Recycling Facts\" href=\"http:\/\/earth911.com\/recycling\/plastic\/plastic-bottle-recycling-facts\/\" target=\"_blank\">Recycling Facts<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Plastic Facts\" href=\"http:\/\/www3.niu.edu\/recycling\/alum_facts\/page4.html\" target=\"_blank\">Plastic Facts<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"The History of Plastics\" href=\"http:\/\/inventors.about.com\/od\/pstartinventions\/a\/plastics.htm\" target=\"_blank\">The History of Plastics<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Parkesine\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Parkesine\" target=\"_blank\">Parkesine<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Xylonite\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Xylonite\" target=\"_blank\">Xylonite<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note: This is a guest article contributed by plastics engineer and owner of Polymeric Life, Noah. <a href='http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com' title='Interesting Facts'>Today I found out<\/a> where the word plastic came from. The word plastic existed long before the first plastic, Parkesine. As early as the 1600\u2019s, plastic was used as a term to relate to something that could be easily molded or shaped. Plastic is [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[137,131,225,585],"class_list":["post-2515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-i-found-out","category-language","tag-etymology","tag-language-2","tag-origins","tag-plastic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2515"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2524,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2515\/revisions\/2524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}