From the summary, "Plastic bags usually take several hundred years until they decay..."
This is technically incorrect. Plastic bags have not existed for even fifty years, let alone a hundred or several hundred. Based on the best research and scientific modeling, materials scientists expect that plastic bags will remain for hundreds of years before they degrade, but that is an educated conjecture, not an observed fact.
Even tests done in ways to simulate time are by definition, simulations. They may w
The decay rate of polyethylene is on sturdier ground than the decay rate of modern concretes and steels, so I don't think there's much cause for pathological scepticism. Unless you're unduly concerned that your roof is about to fall in on your head.
Given where my career and interests have taken me, I'm regularly in engineering spaces in buildings to see and interact with the concrete and steel and wood of buildings. I have a good feel for how building materials up to a hundred years old behaves.
If we're going to play that game, I'm a materials chemist. Trust me, you can expect more surprises from concretes and steels - amazingly clever mixtures - over fifty years than you can from a simple polyethylene film over a hundred.
When I was in university there was a mysterious forest of iron taking up part of the site. A field of concrete blocks, with rebar poking out the top. A strange sculpture perhaps, or the remnants of some abandoned construction left to rust.
Towards the end of my time there I did learn the purpose: It was part of a study on concrete aging. Every couple of months someone would visit to forklift a few blocks off for testing to destruction.
IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's
got to be a better way.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
Taking exception to a statement in the summary (Score:3)
This is technically incorrect. Plastic bags have not existed for even fifty years, let alone a hundred or several hundred. Based on the best research and scientific modeling, materials scientists expect that plastic bags will remain for hundreds of years before they degrade, but that is an educated conjecture, not an observed fact.
Even tests done in ways to simulate time are by definition, simulations. They may w
Re: (Score:4, Insightful)
The decay rate of polyethylene is on sturdier ground than the decay rate of modern concretes and steels, so I don't think there's much cause for pathological scepticism. Unless you're unduly concerned that your roof is about to fall in on your head.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Taking exception to a statement in the summary (Score:3)
If we're going to play that game, I'm a materials chemist. Trust me, you can expect more surprises from concretes and steels - amazingly clever mixtures - over fifty years than you can from a simple polyethylene film over a hundred.
Re: (Score:2)
When I was in university there was a mysterious forest of iron taking up part of the site. A field of concrete blocks, with rebar poking out the top. A strange sculpture perhaps, or the remnants of some abandoned construction left to rust.
Towards the end of my time there I did learn the purpose: It was part of a study on concrete aging. Every couple of months someone would visit to forklift a few blocks off for testing to destruction.