Plastic • 2012 • episode "2/3" How It Works

Category: Technology | Download:

From the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, materials have helped drive forward our civilisation. By manipulating materials we have been able to transform our world and our lives - and never more so than in the past century when we have discovered and designed more materials than at any other time in human history. (Part 2: Plastic) Professor Mark Miodownik tells the story of plastics - created in the lab, they have brought luxury to the masses and shaped the modern age. He recounts tales of the mavericks responsible for some of plastic's most outrageous failures and heady successes, from the explosive attempts to make a replacement for ivory billiard balls to the ultimately ubiquitous Bakelite. Investigating at atomic level, Mark discovers the properties that have allowed plastics to dominate our world and reveals how the next generation of plastics will take its inspiration from nature, creating man-made materials which behave as though they are alive and which could help rebuild the human body.

Make a donation

Buy a brother a hot coffee? Or a cold beer?

Hope you're finding these documentaries fascinating and eye-opening. It's just me, working hard behind the scenes to bring you this enriching content.

Running and maintaining a website like this takes time and resources. That's why I'm reaching out to you. If you appreciate what I do and would like to support my efforts, would you consider "buying me a coffee"?

Donation addresses

buymeacoffee.com

patreon.com

BTC: bc1q8ldskxh4x9qnddhcrgcun8rtvddeldm2a07r2v

ETH: 0x5CCAAA1afc5c5D814129d99277dDb5A979672116

With your donation through, you can show your appreciation and help me keep this project going. Every contribution, no matter how small, makes a significant impact. It goes directly towards covering server costs.

How It Works • 2012 • 3 episodes •

Metal

From the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, materials have helped drive forward our civilisation. By manipulating materials we have been able to transform our world and our lives - and never more so than in the past century when we have discovered and designed more materials than at any other time in human history. (Part 1: Metal) Professor Mark Miodownik travels to Israel to trace the history of our love affair with gleaming, lustrous metal. He learns how we first extracted glinting copper from dull rock and used it to shape our world and reveals how our eternal quest for lighter, stronger metals led us to forge hard, sharp steel from malleable iron and to create complex alloys in order to conquer the skies. He investigates metals at the atomic level to reveal mysterious properties such as why they get stronger when they are hit, and he discovers how metal crystals can be grown to survive inside one of our most extreme environments - the jet engine.

2012 • Technology

Plastic

From the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, materials have helped drive forward our civilisation. By manipulating materials we have been able to transform our world and our lives - and never more so than in the past century when we have discovered and designed more materials than at any other time in human history. (Part 2: Plastic) Professor Mark Miodownik tells the story of plastics - created in the lab, they have brought luxury to the masses and shaped the modern age. He recounts tales of the mavericks responsible for some of plastic's most outrageous failures and heady successes, from the explosive attempts to make a replacement for ivory billiard balls to the ultimately ubiquitous Bakelite. Investigating at atomic level, Mark discovers the properties that have allowed plastics to dominate our world and reveals how the next generation of plastics will take its inspiration from nature, creating man-made materials which behave as though they are alive and which could help rebuild the human body.

2012 • Technology

Ceramics

From the Stone Age to the Silicon Age, materials have helped drive forward our civilisation. By manipulating materials we have been able to transform our world and our lives - and never more so than in the past century when we have discovered and designed more materials than at any other time in human history. (Part 3: Ceramic) Professor Mark Miodownik traces the story of ceramics. He looks at how we started with simple clay, sand and rock and changed them into pottery, glass and concrete - materials that would allow us to build cities, transform the way we view our world and communicate at the speed of light. Deep within their inner structure Mark discovers some of ceramics' most intriguing secrets. He reveals why glass can be utterly transparent, why concrete continues to harden for hundreds of years and how cooling ceramics could transform the way we power cities of the future.

2012 • Technology

You might also like

The Sun

The Sun is our star. Its energy enables life on the Earth to thrive yet we know so little about the solar weather and the 11-year solar cycle. Modern technology can be adversely affected by giant coronal mass ejections and there appears to be a link between sunspot activity and climatic conditions.

S1E8Zenith: Advances in Space Exploration • 2021 • Technology

Space Force Declassified

Outer space has been transformed from a realm of scientific endeavor to the US military's newest battlefield. From anti-satellite missiles to laser technology, discover the cutting-edge race to build the ultimate space weapon.

S8E7Space's Deepest Secrets • 2021 • Technology

American Made Marvels

The rise of the skyscraper coincided with the rise of America as a global superpower, and experts reveal how expert engineering and cutting-edge technology helped power humankind's race to conquer the sky.

1/6Skyscrapers Engineering the Future • 2019 • Technology

In Search of The Most Dangerous Town On the Internet

Watch the cybercrime documentary profiling the Romanian town nicknamed "Hackerville" or "Most Dangerous Town on the Internet." Convicted blackhat hackers, like Guccifer (real name), talk worms, viruses, social engineering, identity theft, and even hacking Hillary Clinton's email.

2015 • Technology

The Earth

The most important planet in the solar system is our home, the Earth. It is the only planet we know that harbors life. This episode looks at the growing understanding of the Earth’s complex climatic systems and the part on-orbit observation plays in the growth of knowledge about our planet.

S1E12Zenith: Advances in Space Exploration • 2021 • Technology

International Space Station

Currently, the only destination for Astronauts and Cosmonauts is the orbiting research platform known as the International space station. This episode exposes the working life of people who spend months orbiting in microgravity.

S1E4Zenith: Advances in Space Exploration • 2021 • Technology