Solid Organic Materials: A Survey of the Characteristics of a New Class of Materials for Use in Engineering Available to Purchase

SYNTHETIC AND OTHER PLASTICS CELLULOSE and rubber are made of long chain molecules already built up for us by nature, but in recent years we have learned to make synthetic polymers with physical characteristics not unlike those of natural polymers; the variety of such synthetic polymers is already somewhat bewildering, and it is quite certain that chemists have only made a beginning in an exploration that promises to be as successful as anything achieved by the classical organic chemists of the nine‐teenth century. Like many other branches of knowledge the subject is easier to understand if not treated in the chronological order in which the discoveries have been made. We will therefore begin with a description of the vinyl polymers rather than the older and better‐known condensation resins.