Word: nylon
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...couple of years ago, some guy stretched an orange nylon curtain across a canyon in Colorado and called it art. I use this only as an example that a lot of people might recognize--there was a photo spread on the event in Life. The photo spread on the event in Life. The wind tore the curtain apart and that was called art too. This whole movement-of someone wrapping up the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art in Christmas paper and a big bow, or of the Museum of Modern Art buying a hole in Connecticut for a substantial...
...Some itchy wool thermal underwear and a couple of wool sweaters still do the job better than most commercial products. Wool retains its warmth when wet--as anybody who has awakened to frozen cottom sweat-shirts can tell you. Over all this is once again an army product--the nylon poncho, a $4.98 product that most of the army-navy storeowners jacked-up in price when they found out how good...
Fortunately, it's possible to make your own down parka, by ordering the nylon and feathers yourself. Stores also carry kits, to put parkas together--which save you considerably over the pre-made designs...
Scientists long suspected that polymers-macromolecules made up of chains of smaller molecules-might be custom-tailored to create an almost infinite variety of materials. Flory, who began his work 40 years ago as a member of the Du Pont research team that developed nylon, showed the way. He devised methods of analyzing and studying polymers that made it possible to develop new plastics and other synthetics on a systematic basis. He also found that there is a specific temperature (now known as the Flory temperature) at which each polymer exists in an ideal state for study of its properties...
...phenomenon of chain transmission, in which one molecule that is growing, or adding units to its chain, can stop and pass its growing power on to another. Industrial researchers are using Flory's discoveries to develop fibers that may prove to have three times the strength of nylon but only a fraction of its weight. Flory, at Stanford since 1961, is currently studying the polymers in living organisms. Because skin, bone and muscle fibers are made up of long-chain molecules, his work could conceivably lead to the day when man will be able to simulate them in laboratories...