Wool

Wool is the natural fibrous covering of the sheep, and also of the llama, angora goat, and other animals. The domestic sheep provides the great bulk of the fibres used in commerce.

Pixiebay

HISTORY

Human beings had been keeping sheep for 7,000 years before it occurred to anyone to use their wool.

One of the laws given to Moses and the Hebrews by God was that clothes of wool and linen must not be mixed. This may seem strange, but it is connected to the old fertility cult, which was widespread in the area they are conquering. The pagans believed that by mixing such things they were producing fertility. But this is just a superstition, God gives fertility and he is against superstition.

The Romans brought sheep into Spain, where long centuries of breeding produced the Merino sheep, which today produces most of the world's finest wool. The Romans also brought the craft of wool manufacture to Britain.

Women in Roman cities were encouraged to occupy their time working with wool. Their task was synonymous with being a virtuous wife and mother. In fact the Emperor Augustus was so eager to re-establish traditional Roman values that he wore woolen clothes made by his wife to encourage women to return to their looms.

The medieval English wool trade was one of the most important factors in the medieval British economy. By 1000 toll-records show German merchants buying raw wool in London.

In the mid-12th century, English wool trade was primarily with Flanders (where wool was made into cloth, primarily for sale via the Champagne fairs into the Mediterranean basin). German and Flemish merchants formed a London association (Hanse) and toured the English countryside for supplies of raw wool.

English Sheep, shown here in in 1240s or 1250s

Edward I of England's frequent military campaigns put a great financial strain on the nation. The king was granted a half-mark (6s 8d) customs duty per sack on the export of wool by the Parliament of 1275. But more money needed to be raised and an unpopular additional duty on wool, dubbed the maltolt or "bad tax" (in Norman-French) was levied between 1294-7.

"Ba, Ba Black sheep" is traditionally believed to refer to the 1275 wool tax. In the nursery rhyme, the black sheep admits to having three bags of wool which will be divided between "the master, "the dame" and "the little boy" (the little boy presumably being the taxman).

The English textile trade grew during the 15th century, to the point where export of wool was discouraged. The smuggling of wool out of the country, known as owling, was at one time punishable by the cutting off of a hand.

Half the population of Calais in the fifteenth century worked for the British wool trade. (Calais was an English possession at the time).

William Shakespeare's father, John, who was prosperous at the time of William's birth, was prosecuted for participating in the black market in wool.

In the 16th century, England invited wool craftsmen from other countries to settle there, and for a time the country became the world's leading wool-textile producer. However, the quality of English wools was in decline, perhaps partly due to a switch in focus to meat production for domestic urban markets, and European supremacy in the production of fine-wool passed to the Iberian peninsula and its Merino sheep.

One of the earliest depictions of a Merino sheep was El Buen Pastor (The Good Shepherd) by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, ca. 1650 (see below)

A 1571 Statute in England ordered the wearing of a "cap of wool knit" to be worn by everybody over six years of age during holidays. This was to help out the ailing wool trade.

Sheep were brought to America by Spanish conquistador and explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1540.

Early American settlers brought sheep to Jamestown in Virginia, and wove their own woolens, called homespuns.

George Washington was one of the first American scientific farmers. He improved his breed of sheep and obtained more than double the average yield of wool.

In 1797 the Merino sheep was introduced into Australia, which has become the world's largest producer of Merino wool: South Africa and South America are also large producers.

A World War I-era poster sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged children to raise sheep to provide needed war supplies. (see below)

Since World War II blendings of wool with synthetic fibres have been developed.

FUN WOOL FACTS

In Britain there are today some 26 breeds of sheep, and the wool is classified as lustre.

Wools from crossbred sheep (usually a cross of one of the lustre class with a merino) are produced in New Zealand.

Wool absorbs and releases water vapour as humidity rises and falls, which is why it works so well as a natural insulator.

The word jersey originally meant any knitted item make from Jersey wool, especially stockings.

Peruvian alpaca wool comes in 22 natural colors, the most of any wool-producing animal.

Asbestos was originally believed to be the wool of the salamander.

Sources Daily Express, Compton's Encyclopedia

Wood

Wood is the main substance in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is mainly formed by the xylem vessels which transport substances that plants need to live. Substances that xylem transports include water and minerals obtained through the plant's roots, as xylem runs from the roots to the stems and leaves.

Different trees make different wood (see picture below): 1. Pine 2. Common Beech 3. Sycamore 4. Oak 5. Birch 6. Sugar Maple 7. Microberlinia 8. African Rosewood 9. Okoumé 10. Common Walnut 11. Brazilian Rosewood 12. Ebony.

HISTORY 

People have used wood for thousands of years for many purposes, including as a fuel or as a construction material for making houses. Buildings like the European Neolithic long house were made primarily of wood.

For certain building projects, like Solomon's temple, wood from the cedar of Lebanon was prized above all other woods. This warm, red wood is free of knots and has a fragrance, which is pleasant to humans, but repels insects, It was in every way an ideal wood for large buildings.

Wood has long been used as an artistic medium. It has been used to make sculptures and carvings for millennia.

Prayer Bead with the Adoration of the Magi and the Crucifixion, Gothic boxwood miniature

The phrase "chip off the block" means a person who resembles their parent, especially in character. A chip is the same wood as the block from which it comes. The expression dates back to 270 BC when it appeared in Theocritus' Idylls.

The phrase by hook or crook dates from around the 14th century. It refers to a time when the poor were allowed to gather as much firewood from their lord's land as they could rake up from undergrowth with a hook or pull down from trees with a shepherd's crook. It was first recorded in the Middle English Controversial Tracts of John Wyclif in 1380.

Grinling Gibbons (April 4, 1648 – August 3, 1721) is widely regarded as the finest-ever woodcarver working in England. Most of his work was in lime (tilia) wood, especially decorative Baroque garlands made up of still-life elements at about life size, made to frame mirrors and decorate the walls of churches and palaces. His exquisite cascades of leaves, flowers and fruit adorn Hampton Park Palace, St Paul's Cathedral and countless other stately homes and churches.

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES 

Wood is the hard tissue beneath the bark of many perennial plants. It is composed of water conducting cells, or  secondary xylem, and gains its hardness and strength from deposits of lignin. The secondary xylem is laid down by the vascular cambium which forms a new layer of wood annually, on the outside of the existing wood and visible when a tree is felled as an annual ring.

The central wood in a branch or stem is known as heartwood and is generally darker and harder than the outer wood; it consists only of dead cells. As well as providing structural support, heartwood often contains gums, tannins, or pigments which may impart characteristic color and increased durability. The surrounding sapwood is the functional part of the xylem that conducts water.

Woods are usually divided into softwood (from conifers) and hardwood (from flowering plants). Softwood makes up about 80% of the world's production of lumber.

Although in general softwoods are softer than hardwoods, this is not always the case. The difference between hardwood and softwood has to do with how they reproduce, not the hardness of the wood. Pitch pine, for instance, which is very dense and hard, is a softwood.

Cuipo wood is classified as a hardwood. However, according to the Janka test, the softest wood in the world belongs to the Cuipo tree, which has a rating of just 22 lbf (pounds-force) making it is drastically softer than Balsa wood which has a higher, but still very low rating.

Cuipo Tree

The hardest wood is said to come from the Australian Buloke (pronounced "Bull-oak") tree, with a huge rating of 5060 lbf. (For reference, a commonly worked with type of wood that is generally considered very hard is Hickory, which has a1820 lbf rating).

USES 

Wood has been an important construction material since humans began building shelters and, houses. Carpenters make houses of mostly soft wood such as pine.

Wood has always been used extensively for furniture, such as cabinets, chairs and beds. For many kinds of furniture carpenters use harder wood such as maple or oak.

Nearly all boats were made out of wood until the late 19th century, and wood remains in common use today in boat construction.

Wood has a long history of being used as fuel, which continues to this day, mostly in rural areas of the world. Hardwood is preferred over softwood because it creates less smoke and burns longer.

Wood pulp is wood that has been processed in into a pulpy mass of fibres. Its main use is for making paper, but it's also used to make rayon and other cellulose fibres and plastics. There are two methods of making wood pulp - mechanical and chemical. In the former, debarked logs are ground with water (to prevent charring) by rotating grindstones. The wood fibres are physically torn apart. In the latter, log chips are digested with chemicals (such as sodium sulphite). The chemicals dissolve the material holding the fibres together.

Most paper is made from pine, spruce and eucalyptus.

Sources Hutchinson Encyclopedia, Gizmodo

Velcro

Velcro is the trademark name for hook-and-loop fasteners, a nylon pile fabric that fastens to itself. They are typically tiny loops on strip of wooly fabric snag onto tiny hooks of an opposing strip of same material.

Velcro is often used in place of zippers, buttons, shoelaces and other fasteners, especially on children's clothing, athletic footwear, ski jackets, belts and in medical support devices.

In 1941 Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral  (June 19, 1907 – February 8, 1990) went on a hunting trip with his dog in the Alps. On returning home, he got annoyed at the struggle to remove the burdock burrs which had got attached to his socks, jacket and his dog's fur. His inventor's curiosity led him to study these hard-to-remove burrs under a microscope, in order to discover the secret of their stickiness. De Mestral discovered their natural hook-like shape and saw the possibility of binding two materials reversibly in a simple fashion if he could figure out how to duplicate the hooks and loops.

Burdock

It took de Mestral a decade to replicate the fastening phenomenon synthetically in order to create a mechanized process that worked. Eventually he came up with a new two-sided fastener: using nylon; One side with stiff "hooks" like the burrs and the other side with the soft "loops" like the fabric of his pants.

De Mestral submitted his idea for a patent for his hook-and-loop fasteners in Switzerland in 1951, which was granted in 1955 and then obtained patents in many other countries. In 1957 he branched out to the textile centre of Manchester, New Hampshire.

De Mestral trademarked his invention Velcro from the first syllables of the French words 'velours' (the French for loops, in clothing) and 'crochets' (hooks, on the burs).

A Montreal company, Velek, Ltd., acquired the exclusive right to market the product in North and South America, with American Velcro, Inc. of New Hampshire, and Velcro Sales of New York, marketing the "zipperless zipper" in the United States.

The Velcro fastener system was not an instant hit when it came to market in the early ‘60s. Then NASA started to look for a way to keep objects attached to walls while floating in orbit, and discovered Velcro was ideal. From then on the fashion industry went wild due to it now being space aged.

Astronauts attach pieces of Velcro into their helmets to scratch their noses during space walks.

Compton's Encyclopedia

Turin Shroud

In the late Middle Ages a piece of linen purporting to be the burial garment of Jesus Christ emerged. It showed two faint images of the front and back of a crucified man bearing the same marks as Jesus did at the time of his death and it became known as the Turin Shroud.

The Shroud of Turin: modern photo of the face, positive left, digitally processed image right. By Dianelos Georgoudis

Clement VII, one of the rival popes of the fourteenth century, after first trying to hush up those who would expose the shroud of Turin, signed papers declaring it a fraud. Supposedly, the artist who painted it acknowledged it as a forgery. According to contemporary documents, certain men, for hire, had pretended the "relic" cured them, giving it a reputation, because the forgers desired to make money off it.

In 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. Thirty years later radiocarbon dating tests simultaneously carried out by laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and Tucson, Arizona dated a corner piece of the shroud as having been made between the years 1260 and 1390. Though they concluded it was a medieval fake, no one has ever been able to give an explanation how it came to be made.

In a carefully worded statement Pope Francis urged the faithful in 2013 to contemplate the shroud with awe, without asserting its authenticity.

The shroud is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.

Silk

Silk is a very fine fiber obtained from the cocoons of silkworms. The fabrics are renowned for their luster, drape, and handle.

Bed covered with silver By Wikipedia Loves Art participant "Opal_Art_Seekers_4"

HISTORY

The origin of silk production and weaving is ancient and clouded in legend. The industry undoubtedly began in China, where, according to native record, it existed from sometime before the middle of the 3rd millennium.

According to legend, Silk's textile origins date back to 2640 BC in ancient China. Hsi Ling Shi, the wife of the Yellow Emperor, Xi Ling-Shi, went for a walk among damaged mulberry trees and noticed glistening threads attached to worms eating the plant's leaves.

There are differing accounts about how long it took before Xi Ling-Shi and his wife realized the silkworms cocoons could be harvested into silk, but one version recounts the Empress dropping a cocoon into her tea and watching it unravel into silken threads.

According to tradition, Hsi Ling Shi invented the loom and applied it to the production of highly prized silk fabrics. She is a popular object of worship in modern China, with the title of 'Silkworm Mother' (Can Nainai).

Loom Pixiebay

The earliest known silk from bombyx mori was found in a bamboo basket unearthed by archaeologists in China. Other pieces in the same basket were from wild silkworms. The fragments date from between 2850 and 2650 BC.

The dyeing of silk using natural dyestuffs was practiced by the Chinese as far back as 2600 BC. A Chinese text from that date lists natural dye recipes for silks..

Picture below shows Woven silk textile from tomb no 1. at Mawangdui in Changsha, Hunan province, China, from the Western Han Dynasty, 2nd century BC.

By drs2biz - DSC02641, Wikipedia

The rearing of silkworms (sericulture) originated in China before 1100 BC. It was the Shang people of the Far East who learned to cultivate the silkworm. They wove its fragile filaments into very delicate fabrics. The silks were cut and sewn into flowing garments with long, loose sleeves.

The Emperors of China strove to keep knowledge of sericulture secret to maintain the Chinese monopoly. Because poor people could not afford real silk, they tried to make other cloth look silky. Women would beat on cotton with sticks to soften the fibers. Then they rubbed it against a big stone to make it shiny. The shiny cotton was called "chintz." Because chintz was a cheaper copy of silk, calling something "chintzy" means it is cheap and not of good quality.

After Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, trade with the Far East by way of Susa developed and figured silks from China found their way into the homes of wealthy Greeks. The silk trade became so extensive that the major set of trade routes between Europe and Asia came to be known as the Silk Road.

Sericulture reached Korea with technological aid from China around 200 BC and India by AD 140.

The Japanese discovered the secret of how to make silk from silkworm cocoons in about AD 300 that a secret mission from Japan succeeded in penetrating China. The members of the mission obtained silkworms and brought four Chinese girls back to Japan to teach the Japanese the art of sericulture and the uses of silk.

Silkworm Pixiebay

In AD 552 two Persian monks sent to China by the emperor Justinian I succeeded in bringing back to Constantinople a small supply of silkworm eggs concealed in hollow canes. Constantinople became the center of the silk trade and retained that position until the 11th century.

The Ancient Mongol warriors were said to have worn silk vests, as an arrow hitting it does not break the silk but ends up embedding the arrow in the flesh wrapped in silk, allowing the arrow to be removed by gently teasing the silk open.

Italy was the most important producer of silk during the Medieval age. The first center to introduce silk production to Italy was the city of Catanzaro during the 11th century in the region of Calabria. The industry gathered momentum in the 12th and 13th centuries after Roger II of Sicily attacked Greek cities in 1146 and brought captive silk weavers back to Palermo.

King Louis XI brought silkworms, looms for silk weaving, and expert weavers from Italy to France during his reign from 1461 to 1483. The French monarch ordered mulberry trees, for the propagation of silk worms, to be planted round Paris, Tours and Orléans.

Silk was introduced to the New World in 1519 when Hernando Cortés brought silkworm eggs and mulberry trees to Mexico from Spain.

Thousands of French weavers left France in 1685, when Louis XIV outlawed Protestantism by revoking the Edict of Nantes. They fled to England, Switzerland, and Germany and helped to develop silk manufacturing in those countries.

By the mid-1860s, the silk industry in France was being ruined by disease attacking the silk worms. The chemist Louis Pasteur was asked to help and he worked on this problem for six years. His solution on locating a tiny parasite that was infesting silkworms and the mulberry leaves that were fed to them was drastic: Destroy all infected worms and infected food. This was done and the silk industry was saved.

CHEMICAL PROPERTIES

Silk that is made by the silk worm is made up of two main proteins, sericin and fibroin. Fibroin is the structural center of the silk and serecin is the sticky material surrounding it. Fibroin is made up of the amino acids Gly-Ser-Gly-Ala-Gly-Ala and forms beta pleated sheets. Hydrogen bonds form between chains, and side chains form above and below the plane of the hydrogen bond network.

Raw silk of domesticated silk worms, showing its natural shine. By Armin Kübelbeck

The high proportion (50%) of glycine (which is a small amino acid) allows tight packing. Tight packing makes the fibers strong and resistant to breaking. The tensile strength is due to the many interseeded hydrogen bonds. When silk is stretched, the force is applied to these many bonds, and they do not break.

The shimmering appearance of silk is due to the triangular prism-like structure of the silk fibre, which allows silk cloth to refract incoming light at different angles, thus producing different colors.

FUN SILK FACTS

Silk is produced by several insects, like silk worms but generally only the silk of moth caterpillars has been used for textile manufacturing.

In the first month of its life, a silkworm puts on 10,000 times its birth weight.

Silk is mainly produced by the larvae of insects undergoing complete metamorphosis, but some insects such as webspinners and raspy crickets produce silk throughout their lives.

An inch-thick rope of spider's silk can withstand up to 140,000 pounds of pressure.

The "silk" of a spider is stronger than steel threads of the same diameter.

During World War II, the silk of black widows was used to make crosshairs in guns used by the U.S. Army, due to its durability and strength.

An average spider will spin more than four miles of silk in a lifetime.

A strand of spider silk long enough to encircle the whole Earth would weigh just over a pound.

Pixiebay

Sea silk is a highly prized unique material made from the highly endangered Noble Pen Shell clam. The only person who knows the ancient craft is an elderly Italian woman, Chiara Vigo..

Sources Compton's Encyclopaedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, History World

Rubber

Rubber is a material which can stretch and shrink. It can be harvested in the form of the latex from the rubber tree or can be synthesized on a industrial scale.

Latex being collected from a tapped rubber tree, Cameroon. By PRA 

HISTORY

Ancient Mesoamericans discovered how to produce rubber around 1600BC, more than 3000 years before Charles Goodyear invented vulcanization.

Natural latex from the Hevea tree comes from the Olmec culture, in which rubber was first used for making balls to play a game in ceremonial ballcourts.

Early Spanish conquistadors reported the utilization of rubber in combination with textiles for waterproofing purposes in the New World: "rubber-coated rain capes were worn by the Indians of Escuintla on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, a region of heavy rainfall".

Early records dating to the early 1520s describe "an attendant wearing a rubber-coated poncho" and Aztec soldiers "clad in garments woven from the fiber of the henequen coated with indiarubber gum".

In 1738 Frenchman Francois Fresneau, a botanist and scientist sent to Cayenne in French Guiana, discovered rubber trees and smeared latex on some old fabric to create a rainproof material.

Rubber was given its present English name by the British chemist Joseph Priestley in about 1770.

In 1770 Edward Nairne, an English engineer, inadvertently picked up a piece of rubber instead of bread and in doing so discovered rubber's erasing properties. Nairne sold natural rubber erasers for the high price of three shillings per half-inch cube.

In 1818 a British medical student named James Syme used rubber to waterproof cloth to make the first raincoats. Six years later, Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh (1766-1843) patented the process to produce waterproof cloth for raincoats, after experimenting with waste rubber products from Glasgow's new gas works.

American chemist Charles Goodyear received a patent for vulcanization, a process to strengthen rubber on June 15, 1844. Goodyear is credited with inventing the modern chemical process to create and manufacture pliable, waterproof, moldable rubber, which was to be of great importance for vehicle tires.

Charles Goodyear

Charles Goodyear died penniless trying in vain to protect his patents. Brothers Frank and Charles Seiberling started the Goodyear Tire company in 1898 and named it in honor of Goodyear.

Stephen Perry of the London-based rubber manufacturing company Messrs Perry & Company, patented the world's first elastic bands in 1845. Sleeves of vulcanised rubber chopped into bands, they were invented to hold papers or envelopes together.

In 1888, a Scottish vet called John Dunlop fitted his son's tricycle wheels with inflated rubber hoses instead of solid rubber tires in order to make it more comfortable to ride. The invention handily coincided with the new bicycle craze and his company, formed in 1889, became known as the Dunlop Rubber Co in 1900.

James Colquoun. Date(s) of creation: [ca. 1896- ca. 1904)

The natural color of rubber is white – tires were white for the first 25 years of their existence as a byproduct of Zinc Oxide being added to the rubber to add strength. Black tires only started being made after in the early 1900s when, Binney & Smith began selling their carbon black chemicals to Goodrich Tire Company. This was because they found that the use of carbon black in rubber manufacturing significantly increased certain desirable qualities for rubber intended to be turned into tires.

In 1890 William Halsted, the professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, introduced rubber surgical gloves for use in the operating theater. They were not for the patient's sake but to protect the operating-room nurse, his fiancée, whose hands were allergic to antiseptics.

The Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company was founded on August 6, 1892, in Antwerp, Belgium. The company was established to exploit the natural rubber resources in the Congo Free State, which was a private colony controlled by King Leopold II of Belgium. The company's activities in the Congo led to significant human rights abuses and exploitation of the local population, and it played a part in the larger complex of colonization and exploitation in Africa during that time.

Humphrey O'Sullivan, an Irish printer in Lowell, Massachusetts, patented his invention of the rubber heel for shoes on January 24, 1899. It was his custom to stand on a rubber mat to ease his tired feet as he set type. It was inconvenient to carry the mat from place to place, so O'Sullivan nailed pieces of it to the heels of his shoes. To keep the nails from working loose, he molded washers into the rubber. O'Sullivan's invention of rubber heel for shoes outlasted the leather heel then in use.

Sneakers Keds® were first mass-marketed as canvas-top "sneakers" in 1917.  The word "sneaker" was coined by Henry Nelson McKinney, an advertising agent for N. W. Ayer & Son, because the rubber sole made the shoe stealthy or quiet, all other shoes, with the exception of moccasins, made noise when you walked.

PRODUCTION 

The primary source of natural rubber is the Pará rubber tree, which initially grew only in the Amazon rainforest.

By 1898, a rubber plantation had been established in Malaya, and today, most rubber tree plantations are in South and Southeast Asia.

Rubber tree plantation in Thailand. By 松岡明芳 - Sukanya,

Fritz Hofmann, a German chemist, is credited with creating the first synthetic rubber in 1909. He worked at the Bayer laboratory in Elberfeld, Germany, and he was able to polymerize isoprene, a natural compound found in rubber trees. The resulting product was called Buna S, and it was used to make tires and other rubber products.

Sergei Lebedev, a Russian chemist, is also credited with creating synthetic rubber. In 1910, he synthesized a rubber polymer from butadiene, another natural compound. Lebedev's rubber was called SK-1, and it was used for large-scale commercial production during World War I and World War II.

The first rubber plant in Europe SK-1 was established (Russia) by Sergei Lebedev in Yaroslavl under Joseph Stalin's First Five-Year Plan on July 7, 1932. The SK-1 plant was a major success, and it was soon followed by the establishment of other rubber plants in the Soviet Union. By the end of the 1930s, the Soviet Union was one of the world's leading producers of synthetic rubber. 

Sheet of synthetic rubber coming off the rolling mill at the plant of Goodrich (1941)

Vulcanizing rubber joins all the rubber molecules into one single humongous molecule. In other words, the sole of a sneaker is made up of a single molecule.

During the 20th century world production of rubber increased a hundred-fold.

The top rubber producing countries in 2011 were Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Vietnam.

About 15 billion kilograms (5.3×1011 oz) of rubbers are produced annually, and of that amount two thirds are synthetic.

FUN RUBBER FACTS

Lego makes more than 300 million rubber tires a year — making it the world's biggest manufacturer of tires.

A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber.

The game of squash gets its name from the sound that the rubber ball makes when it strikes a wall.

The little rubber thingy at the end of a toothbrush is called a "stimulator tip."

The tiny bits of rubber sticking out of tires are called "nubbins" and they formed in the holes used to pump rubber into the tire mold.

Bubble gum contains rubber.

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

Source Comptons Enyclopedia

Quicksand

Quicksand is a condition that occurs within any type of soil- but most common in sand. It happens when water in the sand cannot escape, which creates a liquefied soil that loses strength and cannot support weight.

Quicksand and warning sign at a gravel quarry in England, UK.. By Andrew Dunn 

A mule is less likely to sink in quicksand than a donkey. This is because the mule is said to remain calm and relaxed in quicksand while donkeys, due to their fear and anxiety, struggles to escape and thereby get trapped deeper and deeper.

By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.

Quicksand may be found inland (on riverbanks, near lakes, or in marshes), or near the coast.

One region notorious for its quicksands is Morecambe Bay, Yorkshire in North England. As the bay is very broad and shallow, a person trapped by the quicksand would be exposed to the danger of the fast moving tides.

People falling into (quicksand or a similar substance was once recurrent theme of adventure fiction, notably in movies. According to a study by the University of Southern California, this gimmick had its heyday in the 1960s, when 2.8% of all films showed someone sinking in mud, sand, or clay. The study also found that the number of films featuring these scenes increased steadily throughout the decade, from 1.2% in 1960 to 4.2% in 1969.

The study's authors suggest that the popularity of these scenes may be due to the fact that they are both suspenseful and visually appealing. Quicksand is a particularly dangerous substance, as it can quickly trap and drown people who are unlucky enough to fall into it. This danger makes scenes of people sinking in quicksand particularly suspenseful, as the viewer is left wondering whether or not the person will be able to escape. Additionally, the slow-motion sinking of a person's body into quicksand can be visually quite striking, making it a popular choice for filmmakers.

The southern sand octopus shoot jets of water into the sand below it, creating a pit of quicksand to escape from predators.

Porcelain

HISTORY 

Porcelain originated in China around the time of the Eastern Han Dynasty period (206 BC – 220 AD. It was perfected by the Chinese during the Tang dynasty (7th-10th-c) when production of the famous jade-green celadon ware began.

Song Dynasty celadon porcelain with a fenghuang spout, 10th century, China.

By the eighth century, tea was now being grown in large quantities in China and was being sold as a commercial crop. The popularity of tea-drinking influenced the development of porcelain, as it was found to be a suitable ceramic for making the tea drinking bowls. These vessels were glazed in picturesque patterns and an attractive bowl for drinking from reflected well on the social status of its owner.

The first mention of porcelain in Europe was in Marco Polo's late 13th century book about his travels in China, Il Milione.

Porcelain found its way to Western Europe from the fourteenth century, and was prized as a semi-precious material, often mounted in gold or silver.

The earliest Chinese porcelain object to have reached Europe was a Fonthill vase (see below), which was a Chinese gift for Louis the Great of Hungary in 1338.

 By the 17th century China-ware brought to Europe by the Dutch and English East Indian companies had become a passion with society ladies.

The first European attempts to make china-ware were at the Medici factory in Florence in the 1570s. However, their attempts at copying Chinese porcelain met with little success.

The German chemist Johann Friedrich Böttger (February 4, 1682 – March 13, 1719) was the first European to discover the secret of the creation of hard-paste porcelain in 1708. Production began the following year and the first pieces went on sale at the Leipzig Easter Fair in 1710.

The monarch of Saxony, Augustus II of Poland finished building a royal porcelain factory in Meissen in June the same year and the operation was transferred there. The Meissen factory was the first to produce porcelain in Europe in large quantities. Since the recipe was kept a trade secret by Böttger for his company, experiments continued elsewhere throughout Europe.

French porcelain factory, 1771.

Vienna Porcelain Manufactory, a porcelain manufacturer in Alsergrund in Vienna, Austria was founded in 1718. The firm was Europe's second-oldest porcelain factory after Meissen porcelain, and for 25 years the two remained the only European producer.

Exports of Vienna porcelain to the Ottoman Empire reached 120,000 pieces a year by the last quarter of the 18th century.

Porcelain can informally be referred to as "china" or "fine china" in some English-speaking countries, as China was the birthplace of porcelain making.

Some china is called "bone" china because some powdered animal bone is mixed in with the clay used to make this china: it gives the china a special kind of strength, whiteness, and translucency.

The first development of what would become known as bone china was made by Thomas Frye at his Bow porcelain factory near Bow in East London in 1748. His factory was located very close to some cattle markets and slaughterhouses, and he therefore had easy access to animal bones. Frye used up to 45% bone ash in his formulation to create what he called 'fine porcelain.' Although in quality it rivaled porcelain imported from Europe and China the factory was not a commercial success.

Designer Henry Janeway Hardenbergh placed the largest order in history for gold-entrusted china, for the opening of New York's Plaza Hotel in October 1907.

FUN PORCELAIN FACTS

The word Porcelain originates from the old Italian porcellana (cowrie shell) because of its resemblance to the translucent surface of the shell.

In 1981 First Lady Nancy Reagan spent $200, 000 on new china for the White House.

Source Europress Encyclopedia

Plastic

A plastic is a material consisting of malleable synthetic or semi-synthetic organic compounds.. The word comes from the Greek plastikos, meaning capable of being shaped and molded.

That sense of 'plastic' has been recorded in English since the late 16th century.

The development of plastics has evolved from the use of natural plastic materials (e.g., chewing gum) to the use of chemically modified, natural materials (e.g., natural rubber) and finally to completely synthetic molecules (e.g., bakelite).

Most plastics are man-made, commonly from chemical products derived from petroleum. Engineers refine the petroleum which goes through a heating process, developing ethylene and propylene, which are the chemical building blocks for many plastics. These chemicals are then combined with other chemicals to produce a polymer.

Household items made of various types of plastic. By ImGz Wikipedia

The very first man-made plastic was Parkesine, invented by Alexander Parkes in 1856. It cracked and was flammable, so was not a total success, but it did open the eyes of the world to the possibilities of plastic.

American inventor John Wesley Hyatt experimented with Parkesine, a hardened form of nitrocellulose, while researching a substitute for ivory to produce billiard balls. He eventually developed a commercially viable way of producing solid, stable nitrocellulose, which he patented in the United States in 1869 as "Celluloid." This new plastic entered production in 1872.

'Plastic surgeon' arrived in 1863, 'Plastic explosives' were first referred to in 1907 and the term 'plastic bag' was first used in 1941. The latter referred to composite constructions with handles fixed to the bag rather than a complete plastic carrier.

The creation of Bakelite, the first commercially successful totally synthetic plastic, was announced by its inventor Leo Baekeland on February 5, 1909. The Belgian chemist devised the plastic as a possible man-made replacement for shellac, which was made from excretions of the kerria lacca insect.

The first semi-commercial Bakelizer, from Baekeland's laboratory

Credit and debit cards were first called 'plastic money' in 1969.

The Boeing 787 came into service in 2009 with its skin is made up of 100% Plastic composites. Plastic makes up 50% of all materials in the plane.

In developed countries, about a third of plastic is used in packaging and another third in buildings such as piping used in plumbing.

Most plastics are durable and degrade very slowly starting due to its composition of very large molecules. This has led to environmental concerns regarding its slow decomposition rate. One approach to this problem is recycling.

Between 1950-2018, humanity has produced 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste; 9% of it is recycled, 12% is incinerated, 79% ends up in a landfill or in the environment. The majority of the world's plastic waste from the developed world is exported to Southeast Asia.

The wax in paper cups is actually a plastic called Polyethylene or PE, the most commonly used plastic in the world and is practically non-recyclable.

The world produces about 400 million metric tons of plastic waste each year, according to a United Nations report. About half is tossed out after a single use.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the name given to a collection of marine debris mostly comprising plastic in the North Pacific Ocean.

Five Asian countries are responsible for 60% of the plastic waste in the world's oceans, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Over 90% of the ocean's plastic waste comes from just ten rivers, eight of which are in Asia (the Ganges, Indus, Yellow, Yangtze, Haihe, Pearl, Mekong and Amur), and two of which are in Africa (the Nile and the Niger).

The weight of the discarded plastic in our oceans is now greater than that of all the living fish.

Every piece of plastic ever made still exists.

Sources The New York Times, Daily Express

Nylon

Though his struggles with depression made him initially reject a lucrative job with the USA chemical firm E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, Inc., organic chemist Wallace Carothers accepted the offer in the late 1920s. Carothers began working at the DuPont Experimental Station on February 6, 1928.

A team of researchers, led by Carothers set out to discover what sorts of materials they could produce from varying combinations of long-chain molecules. In a pioneering process called polymerization they combined atoms into long molecules that varied in the types of atoms used and the ways they were joined, producing an assortment of unique materials.

One day they discovered an unusual property of one of their molten substances: it would stick to a glass rod and form a fine strand. As soon as the strand met the cold air, it solidified and formed a long continuous fiber that was both flexible and strong. The fiber was more stronger and elastic than silk and relatively insensitive to moisture and mildew. The first example was produced on February 28, 1935.

Wallace Carothers in the lab

On February 16, 1937, the du Pont company patented their synthetic textile fiber calling it nylon. The letters "nyl" were arbitrary and the "on" was copied from the suffixes of other fibers such as cotton and rayon.

Wallace Carothers continued to suffer from depression and kept a capsule of cyanide on the chain of his watch. He took his own life with the poison at 41 on April 29, 1937, which meant he never saw the huge success of his material.

One of the first products to be made with this new material was a new type of toothbrush- Dr. West's miracle toothbrush with nylon bristles. Other early uses were for fishing lines and surgical sutures.

DuPont touted its new synthetic textile fibre as being "as strong as steel, as fine as a spider's web."

Nylon stockings was introduced to the American public at the site of the forthcoming World Fair in New York on October 27, 1938. Before nylon, women had to choose between wool, which was hot in summer  and silk, which ran easily.

Nylon stockings appeared on sale for the first time in the U.S in May 1940, retailing at $1.35, The first year on the market, DuPont sold 64 million pairs of nylon stockings.

Nylon stockings being inspected in Malmö, Sweden, in 1954. By Erik Liljeroth, Nordiska museet,

Nylon replaced silk in many different products after silk became scarce during World War II. This included military applications such as parachutes and flak vests of American combatants.

After the war ended, Du Pont went back to selling nylon to the public, engaging in another promotional campaign in 1946 that resulted in an even bigger craze, triggering off "nylon riots".

Nylon is made from coal and petroleum.

Modern armor, used by the army, police, security guards, and people at risk from assassination, uses nylon and fibreglass and is often worn beneath their clothing.

Source Comptons Encyclopedia.