What types of plastic are used to build a car? How are they synthesised and recycled? Marlene Rau and Peter Nentwig introduce two activities from the ‘Chemie im Kontext’ project.
/ iStockphoto
Many teenagers are interested in cars, which contain lots of different plastics: polymers produced from crude oil or renewable materials. An interest in cars can therefore be used to introduce the topic of plastics and polymers, for example in organic chemistry lessons.
Take your students to look at some cars. What do they already know about the plastics used to build cars? What would they like to find out? They could categorise their ideas according to different parts of the car (see Table 1, below).
Table 1: The use of plastics in cars
The important point is that the components of a car have specific requirements (e.g. a seatbelt needs to be strong but flexible), which means that their constituents need specific characteristics (e.g. the material should not tear), so specific types of material (e.g. polyethylene terephthalate) need to be used. If the students do not come up with these connections themselves, ask them why a single type of plastic would not suffice to build a car.
The activities in this article address two of the topics in Table 1: plastics for the rear lights and how plastics are recycled from cars. Each activity consists of a worksheet and background information. The activities are part of a longer lesson plan (see box) suitable for students aged 16+, who should work in groups of two or three. Allow one or two 45-minute lessons for each activity.
‘Chemie im Kontext’ (‘Chemistry in context’) is a project co-ordinated by the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education at the University of Kiel, Germany. Between 2002 and 2008, chemistry teachers, other science educators and representatives of the school authorities developed teaching units for chemistry education – for all grades and types of schools, linking curricular requirements to everyday contexts. Examples of the resources and recommendations for developing further materials are available onlinew1. A set of resources produced by teachers can be ordered free of charge, and four of the lesson plans are freely available online (all in German). A textbook and a teacher’s guide (in German) are published by Cornelsen Verlag.
This article is an extract from one of the lesson plans. The full lesson plan includes six different activities, one for each of the boxes in Table 1.
glass
Image courtesy of BASF 1998
Car lights have plastic covers to keep them clean and dry, and – in some cases – to confer a colour (e.g. red for rear lights and orange for indicators). The material used must be transparent, light, colourable, easily moulded and reasonably strong. In this activity, we will synthesise the plastic used, poly(methyl methacrylate) or PMMA.
Poly(methyl methacrylate) is commonly known as acrylic glass or plexiglass, and is one of a group of plastics called polymerisates. Their common feature is that their basic monomeric units contain one or more double bonds. Under the influence of radicals (molecules with an unpaired free electron), these units undergo radical polymerisation into long-chained macromolecules.
The characteristics of the macromolecule depend on which side chains it has, which in turn depends on the monomer used. By using different monomers in the formation of polymerisate plastics, we can create plastics for different applications in cars. For example, the bulky side chains of PMMA prevent the plastic forming crystalline structures as it solidifies, which would refract light. Instead, such amorphous plastics are transparent, which makes them useful substitutes for glass: lighter, more malleable and less prone to shattering.
We can illustrate radical polymerisation with the car’s fuel tank, which is made of polyethene. Polyethene is formed from ethene (ethylene, C2H4) monomers, in a reaction initiated by dibenzoyl peroxide. When heated to 90 °C, dibenzoyl peroxide splits into two radicals. If one of these radicals binds to an ethene molecule, the ethene molecule’s double bond breaks and a new, larger radical is formed. In this way, a chain reaction begins, which only stops when two radicals react with one another.
Monomer |
Polymer |
---|---|
Ethene |
Polyethene |
Propene |
Polypropylene |
Vinyl chloride |
Polyvinyl chloride |
Styrene |
Polystyrene |
Acrylonitrile |
Polyacrylonitrile |
Methyl ester of methacrylic acid |
Poly(methyl methacrylate) |
Tetrafluoroethylene |
Polytetrafluoroethylene |
Figure 2: The steps involved in polymerisation
Images courtesy of the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education
In our experiment, we will use dibenzoyl peroxide to initiate a similar process: instead of using ethene to form polyethene, we will use methyl 2-methylpropenoate to produce poly(methyl methacrylate).
Image courtesy of the Leibniz
Institute for Science and
Mathematics Education
Use gloves, safety goggles and work under a fume hood. Methyl 2-methylpropenoate, dibenzoyl peroxide and acetone are flammable; acetone is also an irritant. All three must be used with care. Remaining Sudan Red must not be disposed of in waste water.
See also the general safety note.
setup
Image courtesy of the Leibniz
Institute for Science and
Mathematics Education
The reaction will take about 20 minutes, after which the mixture should be visibly viscous. In the meantime, read the information under the heading ‘Polymerisation: plastic for car lights’ and work out the reaction mechanism for the radical polymerisation of the methyl 2-methylpropenoate.
If the plastic starts to solidify in the test tube, you can dissolve it again with acetone. You can then continue the experiment as described, allowing additional time for the acetone to evaporate.
How would you test the properties of your plastic and compare them to those of glass?
of different fuels; from left to
right: heating oil; plastic
waste such as olefins; lignite.
Click on image to enlarge
Image courtesy of the Leibniz
Institute for Science and
Mathematics Education
In this activity, students first learn about how plastics from cars can be recycled, then try their hand at recycling: transforming a plastic bottle into a piece of shaped plastic.
What happens when we have finished with a car? We may think of piles of rusting cars and old tyres, destined for landfill, but in fact many car parts are recycled to recover valuable resources, especially metals.
The plastics in a car can also be recycled, in three ways: as parts, chemical components or fuel.
In this activity, you will recycle waste plastic from a bottle into shaped pieces of plastic. What you do with these is limited only by your imagination: key rings, pendants, Christmas tree decorations
Image courtesy of hippokrat /
iStockphoto
Use safety glasses and work using the fume hood. Do not allow the flame to come into direct contact with the plastic. Be careful not to cut yourself.
See also the general safety note.
Compare the characteristics of the plastic before and after recycling. What conclusion can you draw about plastic recycling?
In your group, discuss the three recycling methods described under the heading ‘Recycling plastics from cars’ and compare possible applications. Reflect on the experiment you have carried out: what are possible applications for your plastic?
At the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF)w2, high-performance fibres such as the plastic Kevlar® have been studied for more than a decade. Five times stronger than steel, weight for weight, Kevlar is used in bicycle tyres and body armour, racing sails and mooring lines.
Much of ESRF’s work on high-performance fibres involves their skin-core morphology: the differences in structure between the outer layers of the fibre and its centre. These differences can influence the fibre’s mechanical properties, so understanding the skin-core morphology may enable the fibres’ properties to be tailored during the manufacturing process.
ESRF’s microfocus X-ray beams are routinely used for new studies of these remarkable materials, for both academic and industrial research. This is because no other techniques provide similar information without sectioning the fibre and potentially altering its internal microstructure. For more information, see Capellas Espuny, 2009.
ESRF is a member of EIROforumw3, the publisher of Science in School.
Parchmann I et al. (2006) Chemie im Kontext: a symbiotic implementation of a context-based teaching and learning approach. International Journal of Science Education 28(9): 1041-1062
Nentwig P et al. (2007) Chemie im Kontext: situated learning in relevant contexts while systematically developing basic chemical concepts. Journal of Chemical Education 84: 1439
Sturm B (2009) The drama of science. Science in School 13: 29-33.
Bradley D (2007) Plastics, naturally. Science in School 5: 66-69.
Comments
recycling plastic in the classroom
It is a nice idea to imitate plastic´s recycling process with PET bottles material. We carried out this in Christmas time as described in Peter Nentwig´s article (student worksheet 2). For the pupils it was interesting to see that "normal" plastics can be liquid.
Some additional hints for others who want to realize this project in their lessons:
It is also possible to use a pair of scissors to cut most of the plastic bottle materials. The softer the shape of the biscuit cutter is, the easier its sides can be covered with aluminium foil without being damaged.
You can also show the properties of thermoplastics by melting polyethlene or polypropylene syringes and tearing them with a pair of tweezers to filaments some metres long.