Tag Archives: Material

Carpets can be petted with one’s foot. Probably.

• Carpet is an invention made of a layer of textiles, that is used to cover a floor.
• ‘Carpets’ are also known as ‘rugs’, although this term is generally used in reference to movable versions.
• Generally, carpets are made of a nylon, polyester, wool, acrylic, sisal or polypropylene fibre.
• Carpets are commonly used for ornamental and decorative purposes, to protect feet from cool floors, for comfort purposes, or to hide floor anomalies.
• Carpets can be made through weaving, knitting, felting, tufting or hooking, often on a loom, and are made by hand or machine.

• Cotton, polyester, nylon, or sisal bindings are generally used on a carpet edge to seal the edges, and thus assist in preventing unravelling.
• The origin of carpets dates from 1000 to 2000 BC or beyond; with the oldest discovered one dating back to 400 to 300 BC, found in 1949 in Siberia, Russia.
• A machine, known as a ‘power loom’, used to produce carpets, was invented in the 1830s by American, Erastus Bigelow, which immediately increased production.
• It is typical for a carpet to feature two layers – the top layer of fibres, and a backing affixed to the fibres.
• If the carpet is to be secured to the floor, a soft underneath layer known as ‘underlay’ is added to enhance its properties and increase its life.

Bibliography:
Carpet, 2016, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet

Carpet History, 2009 Carpet & Rug Pedia, http://www.carpetandrugpedia.com/Carpet-History.htm

Early U.S. Carpet has Woven Wool, n.d, The Carpet and Rug Institute, http://www.carpet-rug.org/About-CRI/History-of-Carpet.aspx

Amazon:       

The facts are reinforced with a nice layer of glass.

• Glass is a common material popularly used for the construction of an object or a building, and is frequently used to make various types of containers, windows, beads, toy marbles and sculpting.
• Light can reflect, refract and pass through glass, while the material is also impervious to water, has a slow erosion rate and is resistant to chemicals.
• Silica is generally used in the making of glass, which is most often derived from sand, and it typically has other chemical additives, most commonly limestone and soda ash, for ease of use, durability, and to improve its properties.
• Glass-making practices originated in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia around 3500 BC, although material of volcanic origin, mainly obsidian, were utilised prior to this time; while containers made of the material were made from the 1500s BC.
• Glass is generally transparent, although it can also be opaque, with colourings derived from foreign particles or ions that can include metals and oxides and other compounds, while brown and green colours are the most commonly used.

• The Great Conservatory at Chatsworth, built in the 1830s, in England’s Derbyshire, was among the first buildings to use glass as a major construction material, and along with the 1851 Crystal Palace built in England’s London by the same designer, Joseph Paxton, it contributed to revolutionising the material for construction purposes.
• The 1800s and 1900s saw the most innovation of glassmaking techniques, including laminating and frosting, along with a comeback of historical methods.
• To make glass, appropriate materials are melted at extremely high temperatures, refined and then moulded or formed through methods including blowing and pressing.
• The mass production of glass products increased from the late 1800s onwards, with the introduction of automated bottle and sheet making machinery.
• As glass is 100% recyclable, it can be recycled over and over, and when it goes through the recycling process, it uses less natural resources and 75% less energy than if it was made from raw materials, and it reduces the quantity of rubbish going to landfill.

Bibliography:
Glass, 2015, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass

History of Glass, 2013, British Glass, http://www.britglass.org.uk/history-of-glass

History of Glass, n.d., History of Glass, http://www.historyofglass.com/

Amazon:        

So much glass is laminated glass; quite outstanding, really.

• Laminated glass is a glass that fails to break apart on cracking, a quality that causes the glass to be categorised as a ‘safety glass’.
• Laminated glass is made of layers of glass, and resin or acetate, generally PVB or EVA, which bond to the glass and hold it together.
• When cracked, laminated glass typically fractures in rings, a pattern that is comparable to a spider web.
• Frenchman Édouard Bénédictus, an artist and chemist, invented laminated glass in 1903, after a flask made of glass failed to scatter into pieces across the floor when he accidentally knocked it off a shelf, as it had unintentionally been coated with a plastic film.
• Commonly, the glass layers of laminated glass are each 2.5 millimetres (0.1 inch) thick, with a 0.38 millimetre (0.01 inch) thick thermoplastic layer situated between the two glass layers, although thicknesses can vary, depending on their application.

Slabs of Laminated Glass
Image courtesy of warrenski/Flickr

• As a general rule, the strength of laminated glass is directly proportionate to the amount or thickness of plastic and glass layers it has.
• Édouard Bénédictus filed a patent for laminated glass in 1909, and while it was designed for automobile windscreen use, it was not until after it had been used in World War I for gas mask lenses that it became widely accepted for the use of windscreens and was enforced in some circumstances by the 1930s.
• Laminated glass with small fractures can be fixed through a process of drilling, filling with resin, and curing the resin with ultraviolet light.
• Laminated glass is most commonly used in windows for both automobiles and buildings, although it has many other applications.
• As a glass considered excellent for high security purposes, laminated glass is notoriously difficult to cut, is resistant to many weapon types and is unaffected or safe in the case of natural disasters.

Bibliography:
Laminated Glass, 2015, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminated_glass

Laminated Safety Glass, n.d, National Glass, http://www.nationalglass.com.au/catalogues/NGP_Section_05.pdf

Safety Glass, 2007, The Great Idea Time, http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/safglass.htm

Amazon:       

Do you understand the harm of plastic shopping bags?

• Plastic shopping bags are strong cheap plastic bags primarily used to carry groceries or other items bought from retail outlets.
• ‘Plastic shopping bags’ are called ‘plastic grocery bags’ and ‘carrier bags’, and they are also known by the generic terms ‘bags’, ‘shopping bags’ and ‘plastic bags’.
• Plastic shopping bags are most commonly made of polyethylene, although bags can be made of bioplastic that originates from vegetable sources and is said to decompose safely when exposed to sunlight and oxygen.
• Plastic bags were invented after the introduction of polyethylene in the 1930s, and in 1962, engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin of Sweden filed a patent for a one-piece plastic shopping bag with an integrated handle for the Celloplast company, and this style of bag is said to be the basis of most modern designs.
• Commercially used plastic shopping bags became highly popular worldwide by the 1980s, acting as a replacement to paper bags which were originally used for purchased goods.

• The cited number of plastic bags produced worldwide varies by source, with suggestions of 500 to 1,000 billion per year, with over 100 billion used in the United States in 2009 and approximately 13 billion used in the United Kingdom in 2008.
• Plastic shopping bags come in a wide variety of colours, made with the addition of different chemicals, and common colours include white, and grey, while words, logos, and other designs are often printed on the bags.
• Plastic shopping bags generally take a hundred years or more to breakdown, and therefore are significant polluters of the environment, killing thousands of marine wildlife yearly, and even causing drain blockages that cause flooding, especially in poor countries.
• Caution should be taken with plastic shopping bags, as they can cause suffocation in children, especially those of a young age, and warning information has been in place on some types of bags in some countries since 1959.
• Stores, nations and even countries like China, Rwanda and Bangladesh, have been banning, limiting or discouraging the use of plastic shopping bags for environmental reasons, including the large quantities of resources required to create the bags in the first place.

Bibliography:
Keller A, History of the Plastic Bag, 2011, Bag Monster, http://www.bagmonster.com/2011/05/history-of-the-plastic-bag.html

Plastic Shopping Bag, 2015, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_shopping_bag

Polythene’s story: The accidental birth of plastic bags, 2008, The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/polythenes-story-the-accidental-birth-of-plastic-bags-800602.html

Amazon: