Plastics are made from petroleum and natural gas to provide the world with infinite uses from the very simple, such as food storage containers, to the very complex, as in artificial limbs. Plastics surround everyone at every moment of their day. Without them all every day items would cost more, and would not be made to suit specific uses, as plastics commonly are.
             The first pioneer in the plastic development was John Wesley Hyatt. He was a New York printer that was competing to find a substitute for ivory in billiard balls to win a $10,000 prize offered by Phelan and Collender.1 Although Hyatt didn't find a substitute for billiard balls, he did make a very important discovery. He invented Celluloid, a chemically treated natural base plastic, which was the first of its kind in 1863. Hyatt mixed together collodion and camphor and this mixture yielded Celluloid.2 Celluloid was too brittle for use in billiard balls, but was used in ladies' combs and gentlemen's collars. Celluloid was later introduced to Eastman Kodak Company as a photographic film-base in 1884.
             In 1907 Leo Baekeland, a Belgian chemist who worked in New York City, created the world's first synthetic, or made-to-order plastic. Baekeland was looking for substitutes for shellac, a sticky substance that is created by the Laccifer lacca at a much slower rate than was needed. One pound of natural shellac could be produced in six months using approximately 150,000 Laccifer lacca. Baekeland created a polymer that was superior to shellac. He mixed phenol and formaldehyde, smelly derivatives of coal, and created a plastic called Bakelite, which was named after him.3 (Appendix A).
             Hermann Staudinger correctly explained the molecular makeup of polymers in 1920. Staudinger was a German chemist that made himself famous when he formed the macromolecular theory. This theory allowed chemists and scientists to invent new ways to make plastics as...