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Plastics
Seller: Crappy Old Books, Barry, United Kingdom
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Condition: Good. Once upon a time, plastics were the future. Not the slightly guilty, recycling-bin-questioning future we think about today, but the full-throated, optimistic, science-will-fix-everything kind of future. And Plastics (1973) by L. S. Brough, published by Hutchinson Educational (ISBN: 009114731X), arrives from that moment like a cheerful lecture from a laboratory that smells faintly of warm polymer. This is a book from the era when plastics were still thrilling. Nylon! Acrylic! Polyethylene! These miraculous new substances promised to replace wood, metal, glass, possibly even common sense. They were light, strong, mouldable, and capable of appearing in every conceivable colour. If humanity couldn?t solve a problem directly, it seemed increasingly likely we would simply mould a plastic version of the solution instead. Brough?s guide is exactly what you?d hope for from a 1970s educational science text: clear, methodical, slightly earnest, and brimming with confidence that chemistry is quietly remaking the world. Here you?ll find explanations of how plastics are made, why they behave the way they do, and how these versatile materials have crept into everything from industrial engineering to household objects that your grandparents probably described as ?modern? Reading it now adds an extra layer of historical intrigue. In 1973, plastics represented innovation, efficiency and progress. Today we view them with a mixture of admiration and mild existential worry. Brough, however, writes from the earlier age of uncomplicated enthusiasm, when the main question wasn?t whether plastics would reshape the world ? only how quickly. Condition: Good. Which feels appropriate for a book about durable synthetic materials. The pages are sound, the structure intact, and it has clearly survived the decades without dissolving into a puddle of petrochemical regret. It?s the kind of solid educational paperback that may once have lived in a classroom cupboard, emerging periodically to explain polymers to generations of slightly confused students. Ideal for collectors of vintage science texts, readers curious about the history of materials science, or anyone who enjoys glimpsing the technological optimism of the early 1970s ? when the future arrived not as an app or an algorithm, but as a shiny new plastic thing. Available now from Crappy Old Books , where even the most serious scientific literature occasionally ends up having a quietly ironic second life. Seller Inventory # 5859
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