What are plastics?

[@JohnLeePettimoreIII]

What I appreciate most about this program is that they never EVER talked down to the kids. They always treated their audience as intelligent, thinking people. And this is yet another thing that creates new generations of thinkers.

[@H_E_N_X]

Exactly, where are these types of programs now?

[@brotmitbutter17]

this also makes it accessible to adults, like here now!

[@rafaelalexie2417]

Precisely why I am watching this at the age of 30. It addresses anyone who is curious.

[@thersten]

Actually, they did simplify it and talked down to you but you didn't notice because you have the intelligence of a small child.

[@LeatherCladVegan]

They learned a thing or two from Charlie, don't you know.

[@brotmitbutter17]

presenting all the clips in single takes is great! its encouraging and i also appreciate how you two pull this off, shows good concentration and task abilities, regardless of the amount of tries it took to get right!

[@CuriosityShow]

Thanks. There were mostly one take (we had to do a show between 7 and 12 at night. Deane and I would each work up our own segments in the week before. We didn't have scripts, so we would walk it through a couple of times so the camera operators and director knew which shots to get on which camera and then we would do the take, ad-libbing the words as we worked. Three cameras allowed us to work between wide and close shots without later editing. - Rob

[@brotmitbutter17]

@@CuriosityShow cool!

[@Maninawig]

I love experiments where one lesson takes a whole table of examples. It seems complex at first and yet, when someone walks you through it, the end result is understandable.

[@cheriekarley2479]

I grew up watching this show I totally loved it. Also when they did experiments they usually used things you would have in your home so you could do it too. And we did such I wonderful time to be alive. It’s a shame how things have changed so much over the years. Cheers cherieK 🦋🌈🐿🇦🇺

[@CuriosityShow]

Thanks; you are exactly right. We would try to use stuff around the home to save expense and also make it easy for children to make things without finding they didn't have balsa, rare adhesives etc. We also always showed our models working so they would know that theirs would work if they got it right and also the limits of what ours would achieve so they didn't have unreal expectations - Rob

[@cheriekarley2479]

@@CuriosityShow thank you kindly for your reply. I know if I’d received a letter from you back then I would of been running around the house so excited. Well I’m a bit old now for the running part. But I am pretty dang excited that you’ve replied to me here. I hope you have a wonderful weekend cheers cherieK 🦋🌈🐿🇦🇺

[@deOliveiraFilipe]

@@CuriosityShow I just recently "discovered" Your show, and the kid in me wants to binge watch everything. I am portuguese so the only thing I had remotely similar to this growing up in the early eighties was a very rude individual making model planes and boats. As You may have guessed, nothing was available for the average boy or girl. Nonetheless I grew up to become a mechanics shop teacher, so now I get to play with similar things. I want to thank You for everything You've done. Real heroes never wear capes I guess.

[@deOliveiraFilipe]

And I must say this is a brilliant way of addressing polymers. I will be plagiarising (?) this shamelessly for my lessons on materials mechanics

[@MissRazna]

the best thing about this video is that the canoe, his gloves, all of the squeezy plastics, the little disposable cups, the clothes pins, and probably even the table is all still sitting in a landfill somewhere for the next ten thousand years looking exactly the same

[@boomstand2872]

or is still in use

[@RacecarsAndRicefish]

that's the magic of plastics huh

[@JWMcLay]

Fan(fkn)tastic isn't it! Another toxic legacy we gifted the world, environment and future generations. We're so reliant on plastics and yet they can do so much harm

[@flicsmo6838]

Actually, it's pretty neat - already there's a type of bacteria (Ideonella sakaiensis, for your googling pleasure) that has evolved to eat a certain kind of plastic. We're not as far as it might seem from world where plastic is naturally broken down not unlike wood - after all, for a long period on earth there wasn't anything that could break down wood either. Eventually, with such an abundant energy source just piling up anywhere and everywhere, fungi and bacteria evolved to be able to use it. It's weird to think that, given a few years (give or take), plastic could rot just like wood if you leave it outside.

[@flatfingertuning727]

Interesting, the use of the term "plastic" as a noun, referring to synthetic resins, is fairly recent. My grandparent's 1950s edition of the Oxford English Dictionary didn't define "plastic" as a noun, but it defined Bakelite as a synthetic resin which is "used as a plastic". The phrase "plastic surgery", however, goes back much further. Of course, nowadays, "plastic" is used primarily as a noun, but it was previously an adjective to describe materials that could be deformed like breaking--unlike the early synthetic resins like Bakelite which were in fact very brittle.

[@PKMartin]

This exact thing was bugging me today. Why does Bakelite count as a plastic? It goes from liquid components to a hard, brittle material that doesn't soften when heated up.

[@ryaliraghava]

That vintage look brings you respect 💯

[@Thomas-wg3wt]

Woodies lemonade bottle! Brilliant Was this filmed in Adelaide? Never missed this show growing up.

[@CuriosityShow]

Curiosity Show was entirely produced in Adelaide and filmed there and on location in places that took the program - Rob

[@Majorhappysaccount]

How did you come up with ideas to demonstrate on the show, did you look up a primary school curriculum or just go with things you both found interesting yourselves? There is such a lack of shows these days that encourage thinking and has been for a generation.

[@CuriosityShow]

We used every idea we came across - eventually you get a filter that says "i can use that" but Deane and I grew up without TV when you had to make and do things yourself, so that was a great foundation - Rob

[@Majorhappysaccount]

@@CuriosityShow Thank you for replying.

[@III-zy5jf]

Monomer and catalyst. Awesome. I learned so much.

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

Excellent clip! I'm curious on two other sub-topics: What the catalysts and the monomers do to each other on a molecular formula level, and how plastics relate to recycling and that now very particular word, "sustainability."

[@cacauldr]

I'm no chemical engineer myself, but this is what I learned from talking to people in that particular field (plastics consumer products R&O and design and people in recycling business): One of the major challenges in both fields is how to keep the incoming stream of source material as well as as the stream of outgoing waste material as homogeneous as possible. And that the growing demand for 'biodegradable' plastics has a downside too, by polluting the stream of ordinary plastics, meaning that these batches can not be used to recycle the plastics that otherwise would be suited for making objects like mileage markers along roadsides, or sturdy plastic bags. Most people are not aware and just throw biodegradable plastics in the plastic waste containers, thinking they're doing the right thing. People are willing, but without knowledge, good ideas can do more harm than good.

[@Ebani]

What they do to each other in a molecular level depends on the molecules themselves but in general plastic catalysts create free radicals in the monomer, it's in this way that each monomer bonds with the next one until the last monomer is polymerized. Given that the reaction is limited by the monomer's concentration, it's very important (industrially) to keep a steady flow of it, hence what cacauldr talked about. About recycling, the thing is that most of the human made stuff has some form of plastic in it bc they have very different properties (just like showed in the video) and you cannot simply recycle all of it bc plastics can easily break down into really small pieces (when you drink water you are also drinking plastics, check "the plastic crisis of the 21st century"). Some plastics are used to make other plastics flexible (such as phtalates, now forbidden to be used in many areas bc of it's toxicity) and fire turns them all to CO2 as they are nothing but hydrocarbon chains (basically candles) which makes it yet another source of CO2. Bottom line, there's just way too much of the stuff. Biodegradable plastics are pretty useless as it takes years to degrade by themselves anyway yet cannot be recycled.

[@robertbackhaus8911]

Different plastics, different answers. Some polymers form solid shapes when they form, and when they cross-link. They form a fixed lattice of molecules. That's all of the plastics he made here. Recycling them would involve chemistry that splits them back into constituent forms. Others form temporary cross links that make and break when you heat it. These can simply be heated up, softened, and reformed into new forms. However, it is impossible to get people to separate them, when you have a bunch of waste plastics it is always a mix of lots of different plastics with other contaminates, which means the recycled plastic of lower quality.

[@yashjadhav4971]

Wow I just love this plz keep posting more of these videos especially which are based on chemistry.

[@dickJohnsonpeter]

Eine plastic ist eine piener. Has du eine kolben in dein pocket?

[@Johny40Se7en]

Wonderful as always. It's stuff like this they should teach in school, this one in chemistry classes especially. Nowadays it would be wonderful to spark creativity in making bio plastics from plants. That's the way to go 😉

[@otakuribo]

For a show meant for children, this is pretty smart stuff! Basic chemistry you can (with adult supervision) experiment with at home!

[@cheriekarley2479]

Normally done without. Things were very different back then. Cheers cherieK 🦋🌈🐿🇦🇺

[@itsjustameme]

But when you look at say a reflection of a mountain in a lake it does get reversed up/down but not left/right

[@sladflob]

That orange laminate = my primary school

[@turpialito]

You guys are admirable!

[@SaturnCanuck]

That was great. is there a similar one on injection molding?

[@royksk]

David And don’t forget the cheaper, rotational moulding.

[@Andrew_Sparrow]

Next week we show you how to use your coin casts to make fake coins ;)

[@TickleMonster333]

I wonder if Bill Nye ever saw this show?

[@metamech7383]

Now show us how when we shift away from refining oil we have to go back to using wood and metal. Polymers are sky rocketing in cost because of this right now. Imagine a world without oil. Now thank a greenie.

[@shaneeslick]

G'day Deane, Well there you go, I thought Catalist meant to write down all the names of my Feline Pets 🤔😸

[@MAC...007]

See kids you can cast ur own coins.

[@royksk]

One thing not mentioned - natural plastics such as fingernails

[@Cahos_Rahne_Veloza]

@4:00 That don't look like Goo, it looks more like Poo 😛

[@TrapperAaron]

Bondo all your home repair needs in a can. Also water putty bondos water-based friend.

[@HandyFox333]

Polyurethane you say?

[@AlterRaigo]

Interestingly there was no mention of it not being biodegradable. Was that not a concept back in 70's?

[@CuriosityShow]

Not really. The great concern then was insecticide and then CFC

[@pepe6666]

Woah

[@rjraby9766]

A 1 dollar coin?!

[@valueinvestor77]

xRJRaby the Australian $1 coin was introduced in 1984, before then we had a $1 note. We also have a $2 coin which was introduced not long after. Our polymer currency starts at $5 note. (See what I did there with polymer - yes Australia has plastic currency for $5 to $100notes).

[@plane9182]

Sorry but the truth is that Australia currency is years ahead of the ancient paper American money. $1 note would be pretty useless coins are nice and small

[@09.dixitarnavshriram40]

plastic was the worst discovery ever made

[@DavidB-rx3km]

Curiosity Show forging money? I’m calling the police.

[@ThePrimeMinisterOfTheBlock]

I win the first comment prize

[@JansthcirlU]

The layman's Olympics, gold medal for you!

[@sweetjohnny8211]

Can I get a participation award?

[@ndingo]

Here is a medal for you 🏅

[@KimimaruOnara]

Dean and Rob would be proud

[@shaneeslick]

@@sweetjohnny8211 Yes you can 🍭

[@09.dixitarnavshriram40]

plastic was the worst discovery ever made