TedEd: A brief history of plastic

A TedEd by the TedEd team

Plastics are endemic to society. But they first came from a round object that wasn't even made of plastic - billiard balls. Billiard balls used to be made from elephant tusk ivory. But overhunting led to a decline in elephant populations, and ball manufacturers posted huge rewards for a new material. In 1863, American scientist John Wesley Hyatt decided to try. For 5 years, he worked to create celluloid, made from a compound in wood and straw called cellulose. Unfortunately, celluloid wasn't heavy enough and didn't bounce the right way to replace ivory in billiard balls. But it could be tinted and patterned to resemble other materials. Plastics are polymers - long molecules made of repeating parts. Plastics are soft and can be easily molded. The first plastic, celluloid, was unfortunately highly flammable, making it less useful. In 1907, Bakelite was created from a mix of phenol and formaldehyde. Since phenol came from the remnants of coal tar, it was cheaper to make, and it was less flammable. In the decades that followed, many other plastics came out, and polyethylene, developed in 1933, is still very commonly used. Injection molding was also created, and it allowed for plastics to be formed in the same mold over and over, opening up an array of possibilities. Surprisingly, plastics were first widely used in World War II, when they were used to make a variety of equipment, rather than to make consumer products. After the war, the factories began making consumer products like furniture and packaging. Unfortunately, the new ease and low costs also came with massive environmental impacts because plastics use many nonrenewable resources and take a very long time to decompose. Scientists today are working on more renewable materials and recycling what we already have.