Question: What is the hardest plastic you have made

Helena Quilter answered on 17 Mar 2016:

Hi Glen Jeff!

Not sure if you mean hardest as in actually hardest or hardest to make so I’ll say both!

None of my plastics are physically very hard. Most of the ones I’ve made so far are usually quite bendy and I think they might one day be useful for plastic bags or food packaging! Quite often they don’t come out how I think and I end up with little piles of white powder. Plastics are actually made up of really long chain molecules called polymers. They’re made up of lots of molecules stuck together one after the other. At the minute I’m trying to make the polymer chains longer to try and make my plastic harder! They’re not going to be exactly the same as the plastics we use now though as they’re made from different chemicals.

The hardest to make plastic is one that I’m trying to make out of the oil I can get from orange peel (limonene) with carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the gas that causes climate change so it’s a good idea to find a way to use it up! Unfortunately those two things don’t like to just react with each other so I’m having to heat them up quite hot and increase the pressure of the gas to try and force it to work. I’m also adding in a metal to try and help the reaction to happen – we call that a catalyst. Unfortunately at the minute it’s not working at all – it’s really hard to do! Hopefully I’ll get it to work soon!