Millions of years ago, dinosaurs and ancient plants covered the surface of the Earth.
[Ticking clock] These once-living organisms are long extinct, but
eons of pressure and heat have turned some of the proteins, cellulose, and other organic matter that
made up their bodies into crude oil and natural gas, which can be made into many things: Gasoline.
[Car honking] Fuel for heat lamps.
[Fire crackling] And plastic.
...Including these grassy Herbert Levine sandals. But how can the cells that make up plants and
animals be turned into so many other things—even plastic footwear? The answer is polymers.
Polymers are chemical materials made of smaller units called monomers that hold together really
tightly like paperclips in a wall... of paperclips. Because the wall is made of lots
of little pieces, it can flex and bend and take on lots of different forms. Polymers are commonly
associated with plastics, but you can find them in all kinds of places. Like in your body...
Or in your rainwear... ...or in your high-fashion outfit.
These sandals are made from petrochemical plastic. That's plastic from the crude oil derived from
organisms that lived on Earth millions of years ago. There are other kinds of plastics, too.
This bugged-out necklace by the surrealist designer Elsa Schiaparelli is made from cellulose
acetate, a semi-synthetic polymer. Semi-synthetic means it was made using science, but has materials
from the natural world in it, too. And this comb may look like a tortoise's shell,
but it's actually made from a semi-synthetic plastic also, called cellulose nitrate. That's a
good thing—before plastic was invented, combs like this were made from the shells of real tortoises,
an endangered species. Glue—another polymer—used to be made
from animals, as well. Now we can produce safe alternatives using synthetic polymers, instead.
Animal shells, horns, and hides are made from the same natural polymers as the ones in our body,
as well as natural polymers that are found in products produced by plants like resins,
sugary gums—maple syrup is one—and oils. We can find examples of polymers all over the Museum.
Polymers are strong, but not invincible. Sometimes environmental factors like heat,
humidity, and light start to break apart the hold the monomers have on each other.
Scientists at The Met use high-tech equipment to study the polymers in each
object to see what they are made of and determine the best way to keep them safe.
-Some solutions could be to keep the polymers, which are light-sensitive, in the dark. We can
store polymers, which are sensitive to moisture, in a dry environment. Sometimes it is advisable
to keep plastics in a cold or even freezing temperature, so we keep them in cold storage.
Cold storage: that's a big refrigerator the size of a room.
But not all plastics degrade with time. Too often, fashion is all about what's popular right now,
with little consideration for what happens to clothing in the long run. This fast fashion
often means that many clothes that don't break down naturally are thrown away and end up as
pollution in a landfill. By studying polymers, we may be able to create art,
objects, and outfits that will be as good for the future as they are for our fit.