does anyone know the basic ingredients you have to have to make plastic? like maybe resin, binder etc etc... the main stuff a plastic is made of... and where do the polymer things go in in the solution?
To make a plastic you start with an organic (carbon based) ingredients and join them together in a condensation process to form very long chain polymers (plastic). A polymer is formed by the combination of one or more molecules into a chain. In plastics these chains are extremely long, which makes them strong. The most common plastics are made from oils, such as polyethene. But you could make them out of most organic compounds. Cellulose from plants is often used also. CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 + CH2CH2 .... becomes CH2CH2CH2CH2CH2CH2CH2CH2CH2CH2CH2CH2 ... (CH2)*n n is greater than 1000 Ethane molecules (gas from crude oil) ==> Polyethene chain
Here is a little book that is a REAL chemist's introduction to polymers. It's a thin little paperback that will be a challenging read for someone with not much chemistry background, but so what? Polymers by David J. Walton and J. Phillip Lorimer
It entirely depends on what polymer you intend on making. What most people consider plastic is polyethylene of varying formula mass, which can be done with household ingredients, I think, but probably isn't in industry. Also polymers don't typically stay in solution if you make them right.
