I had this thought a while back when reading about something made out of, well I forget what they called it, but it was a euphamism for plastic. Made me think of the lengths that advertisers will go to to avoid using the word “plastic.” Many of them are just plain wrong.
Frinstance: the “resin” lawn chairs. Resin is the ground up plastic and additives that is molded to make the chairs.
Others sound better, but, if you know anything about plastics, you can see right through it.
“Thermoplastic” is another. Sounds neat, with that THERMO prefix. (Better than cheapoplastic resin, I guess.) The thing is, there are only 2 families of plastics: Thermoplastic, which softens when reheated and hardens when cooled, and can repeat the cycle, and thermoset, in which you only get one heat cycle, and then the molecules crosslink and it becomes very heat resistant (phenolic, melamine, bakelite are some thermoset examples.)
“Engineered Thermoplastic” is another cool sounding one. There are many different types of this, and believe it or not, nylon even fits in this category.
“Poly” is another prefix used to sound better than what it really is. It just means many. Polymer = many mers. Space-age polymer.
Gee, hasn’t the space age been around for almost HALF A CENTURY!
Usually these euphamisms are abundant on the infomercials and shopping channels (that I don’t watch unless I can’t sleep at 3am). I think they’re funny.
This red container is made from a space age thermoplastic polymer resin. That’s true, but most of us would call it a plastic gas can. It’s made of polyethylene (or polypropylene, I forget which.)
Now, I personally do not like the cheap blowmolded kids’ toys all over the yard, and of course, anything cheaply and poorly made (regardless of the material), but plastic has been around since Mrs. Robinson’s days, and I think it really gets a bad rap. Look around and see how much we couldn’t do if it weren’t for the plastic in our lives. And it’s usually recyclable!
I wish I could remember the one word that made me start this thread. Anybody else out there know of some other words used to reference plastic?
Sorry for the long, rambling, totally unnecessary post.
Pete Duffy, Handyman
Replies
Guess that explains Vinyl Siding?
Joe H
Polystyrene is almost singlehandedly responsible for giving "plastic" a bad name. Too many goods were made of cheap polystyrene with no impact modifiers in the early days. "Plastic" and "cheap" went hand in hand.
If you select the right polymer and design the article correctly, plastics are amazing materials. It's absolutely stunning what you can do with these materials- things that couldn't even be attempted prior to their invention.
What amazes and annoys me most is the number and variety of "disposable" goods that plastics have permitted. Twenty years ago I worked in a plant which had a machine running basically 24/7 making the little plastic hangers that are used to display neckties in stores. That machine put out eight hangers in less than 15 seconds, and the entire output of that machine ultimately ended up in the garbage. It still makes my mind reel thinking about the stupidity of such a wasteful use of resources. Personally I have no use for ties either, but at least they rot in someone's closet for a long time before they find their way into the landfill!
"polystyrene is almost singlehandedly responsible for giving "plastic" a bad name. "Yet many of the same people will praise the qualities of Stryfoam, which is just a brandname for polystrene based foam.
composite?
I understand the negative aspect of the name because some early plastics were poor quality especially in comparisson to the steel they replaced, but plastic is in my mind mainly an adjective.
Lava is plastic when it fl;ows.
Concrete is plastic when it is placed.
Both of those are enduring substances.
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Composite isn't a word to describe plastic per se. A lot of composites are anything but "plastic". Just as concrete is plastic when it's poured, it's a composite of aggregate and cement when it's cured. MDF and plywood are both composite materials, but it'd be a stretch to call them "plastic materials" just because the wood is composited together with a thermoset resin.
Don't get me wrong- polystyrene is a magnificently useful material both as a foam and as an engineering thermoplastic. It's just that the wide misapplication of solid low-impact polystyrene was pretty much responsible for all plastics getting a bad name in the early days of the industry.
I know all that. I was responding to the OP with a possibility for the name he is casting about for.
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Nope, composite wasn't the one I was thinking of, but I do see that a lot. Composite just means more than one thing put together. Space age composite: taking several pictures of moons and stars and making one picture out of them.
You're right, plastic is an adjective. Plastic deformation, meaning it is beyond elastic deformation, for example.
I'll keep looking for that one goofy word that started this all.Pete Duffy, Handyman
Sorry Piffin- knew you knew. Been wracking my brain trying to think of something the OP didn't already mention too and I'm unfortunately coming up short. Lots of descriptive words come to mind but none of them is applicable to all or even most plastics.
Often when sales people are trying to make something sound sophisticated they use technical language: ie. co-polymer or isotactic polymer or ultra high molecular weight polymer sound somehow better than "plastic". Is that what he means? Or is it something like "cross-linked" or "reactive injection moulded" or the like?
Hybrid composite resin? Probably not if composite didn't ring a bell.
Engineered polymer.
Nope, not here yet. I'll keep checking though, and I'll look through my magazines because I think that's where I saw it. Of course, maybe heard it on the radio.
(And you wonder why I need a contract because I don't trust memories?)
BTW, in a former life, I was an engineer in 3 companies that did plastic injection molding. One was really high tech, tight tolerance, miniatures in just about every industry. That was cool.
The next was a company that made "closures." We would call them bottlecaps (that company invented the "butterfly hinge" you see on toothpaste caps and others.) Both those companies used a variety of thermoplastics.
The last company made commutators (for electric motors. Some customers were Milwaukee and Bosch. I know we made the comms for the Sawzall) That used phenolic thermoset. A real nasty place, and really dirty and smelly. 40 million commutators a year with about 150 employees.
More useless information on an originally useless post. Gotta find that weird word.Pete Duffy, Handyman