How does the chemical composition and structure of a substance determine its properties with regard to its use, capacity for reuse, and capacity for recycling?
The reason we use different materials in different places often has to do with its physical properties. For example, the reason we use plastic for PVC tubing is that plastic forms in really long chains that can easily resist the inward pressures of whatever it may be transporting. As we know long chains of things are really good under tension and plastic, in particular, is easy to create which makes it a good material for the job.
However, PVC once cut is never really capable of being used in other places unless it is cut sort and cleaned. In this case, the cheapness of PVC is a double-edged sword it makes an inexpensive project but if it somehow gets messed up it is more effective to just buy new material. This means the old PVC gets thrown away, even though PVC happens to be recyclable. Most of the plastic it too contaminated to reuse which the PVC ends up going into the landfill along with 90% of the other plastics we try and recycle.
How do the choices we make as consumers (purchasing, use, reuse, recycling, and discarding of materials) impact our local community and environment, and the global community and environment?
In the long run, every choice that we make can affect the environment. For example, if you get a plastic bag at the grocery store because you forgot to bring a bag from home. These bags are typically cheaply made and often fragile, this means you can only get one or two uses out of this bag. Afterward, it has so many holes that it is unusable and gets thrown away and the plastic bag is extremely light so it can easily get blown away by the wind along any part of its journey. This tends to either get caught in trees or get blown into the ocean which gets caught in the digestive tract of many animals.
What else did you learn through this project? You can reference:
I learned a lot about how physical properties are actually reflections of what it looks like on the molecular level. A piece of steel, for example, can retain its shape because of the shared electrons/see of electrons that bind the different atoms together. But I also learned how certain bonding affects similar properties, such as a cube of salt, when broken it reduces down to small and smalle cubes. This is because the atoms in an ionic bond can only be arranged so that metals are touching non-metals when displaces the structure has to divide as opposed to crumble.
The reason we use different materials in different places often has to do with its physical properties. For example, the reason we use plastic for PVC tubing is that plastic forms in really long chains that can easily resist the inward pressures of whatever it may be transporting. As we know long chains of things are really good under tension and plastic, in particular, is easy to create which makes it a good material for the job.
However, PVC once cut is never really capable of being used in other places unless it is cut sort and cleaned. In this case, the cheapness of PVC is a double-edged sword it makes an inexpensive project but if it somehow gets messed up it is more effective to just buy new material. This means the old PVC gets thrown away, even though PVC happens to be recyclable. Most of the plastic it too contaminated to reuse which the PVC ends up going into the landfill along with 90% of the other plastics we try and recycle.
How do the choices we make as consumers (purchasing, use, reuse, recycling, and discarding of materials) impact our local community and environment, and the global community and environment?
In the long run, every choice that we make can affect the environment. For example, if you get a plastic bag at the grocery store because you forgot to bring a bag from home. These bags are typically cheaply made and often fragile, this means you can only get one or two uses out of this bag. Afterward, it has so many holes that it is unusable and gets thrown away and the plastic bag is extremely light so it can easily get blown away by the wind along any part of its journey. This tends to either get caught in trees or get blown into the ocean which gets caught in the digestive tract of many animals.
What else did you learn through this project? You can reference:
I learned a lot about how physical properties are actually reflections of what it looks like on the molecular level. A piece of steel, for example, can retain its shape because of the shared electrons/see of electrons that bind the different atoms together. But I also learned how certain bonding affects similar properties, such as a cube of salt, when broken it reduces down to small and smalle cubes. This is because the atoms in an ionic bond can only be arranged so that metals are touching non-metals when displaces the structure has to divide as opposed to crumble.
Materials, Trash and Recycling
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