What is plastic made of?

Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen

Plastics are polymers, and are composed primarily of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Polymers are just very long chains of atoms which repeat again and again.

Today most plastics are made from petrochemicals (crude oil and natural gas), although they can be also produced from corn and other biomasses. In manufacture from petrochemicals, refineries process crude oil to produce fuels, such as gasoline, diesel, and a number of different of lubricants. They also spin off a wide variety of other petrochemicals. These other petrochemicals are then used by chemical plants to make many products like fertilizers and plastic resins. Plastic resins are, in turn, used to produce many different types of plastics.

Other contributors added:

• The majority of what we know as plastics used today are mainly made from one major ingredient: oil. The same kind of oil that runs our automobiles and the economy.

• There are various sources, both natural and synthetic, of polymers: silicones, teflon, PVC, etc.

• Elementally plastics can contain carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), but also nitrogen (N), chlorine (Cl), fluorine (F), silicon (Si), sulfur (S), and phosphorus (P). The term plastic merely refers to the property of being able to form the material when soft and then harden afterwards.

• Really, you should say "polymers" and not "plastics." And the answer really is, what polymer?

Take cellulose acetate--a very popular polymer, used mostly in thin films. It's made from cotton. Some rubbers are made from the sap of a tree. The plastic in your soda bottle is made in part from antifreeze. Silicones are made from sand. Vinyl is made from acetylene.

I really like http://pslc.ws, the Polymer Science Learning Center. Check that site out; they tell you how a lot of popular polymers are made. They wrote it for all grade levels, meaning parts of it are grade school stuff and others are high school stuff. But check it out anyway, because you'll learn a lot.

From Wikipedia

People experimented with plastics based on natural polymers for centuries. In the nineteenth century they discovered plastics based on chemically modified natural polymers: Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanization of rubber (1839) and Alexander Parkes, English inventor (1813-1890) created the earliest form of plastic in 1855. He mixed pyroxylin, a partially nitrated form of cellulose (cellulose is the major component of plant cell walls), with alcohol and camphor. This produced a hard but flexible transparent material, which he called "Parkesine." The first plastic based on a synthetic polymer was made from phenol and formaldehyde, with the first viable and cheap synthesis methods invented by Leo Hendrik Baekeland in 1909, the product being known as Bakelite. Subsequently poly(vinyl chloride), polystyrene, polyethylene (polyethene), polypropylene (polypropene), polyamides (nylons), polyesters, acrylics, silicones, polyurethanes were amongst the many varieties of plastics developed and have great commercial success.

First answer by ID1027976843. Last edit by ID1246111610. Question popularity: 74 [recommend question]