Seaweed, eh?
Maybe this one will pay off. I'll admit to being a bit skeptical because I've heard of a number of bio-based polymers that were going to replace plastics with far more environmentally-friendly polymers, and the next one that really works to replace plastics will be - as far as I know - the first one.
Maybe I'll be seeing their ooho packaging replacing ketchup packets and water bottles sometime soon...maybe...
Some explanations are so remarkably simply that I never would've thought of them.
I've heard of hopper crystals in bismuth for years. I always assumed that they were studied by a scientist named Hopper. In this video, Adam Ragusea explains that they're actually called hopper crystals (not Hopper crystals) because they resemble the shape of a hopper that feeds ingredients into a production line.
And that's just the surface level of new knowledge that I got from this video. Adam spends much more time trying to explain why making hopper crystals of salt - the ones he shows and that I have in my cabinets at home as Maldon salt - is hard to do. Apparently they only form in super-saturated salt solutions and then only stay hopper-shaped pyramids until they either bump into other crystals to form a raft or get heavy enough to sink to the bottom of the solution and in-fill with more salt.
If only they could get them to grow in space - as an International Space Station experiment shown in the video recounts...
I think I've made my opinion abundantly clear around here before: we have to stop using plastics.
Manmade polymers are bad for us and for our environment in almost every case.
I say all this from no moral high ground as I'm typing this on a laptop with a plastic case, plastic keys, and assuredly plastic components glued and soldered in ways that make it relatively impossible to recycle.
Today's article - from phys.org - states what seems like a pretty clear and undebatable conclusion: people are confused as to what biodegradable, bioplastic, and compostable mean, and that confusion might lead to even more plastic trash around our world.
Preaching to the choir there...Experts on all sides of the biodegradable battleground agree that beyond reducing use, governments need to set up better disposal infrastructure to ensure biodegradable plastics don't end up in oceans and on forest floors.
I wasn't initially excited to tour a research lab when I was helping out with our second year ASM teacher camp at Rowan University, but the research lab where they were working on different formulations of roadbed asphalt was surprisingly fascinating.
They went over the ingredients in modern asphalt and how they were adjusting the ingredients of the mixture to vary the performance in different climate conditions. It was a really interesting lab tour, easily the best of the three labs that we got to tour on that field trip.
Clearly there's a lot to learn about pavement, especially when I hear - from the above video - that asphalt roads can be recycled pretty much indefinitely with only minor additions along the way.
