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Polystyrene is a very useful and versatile manufacturing and packaging material. Created from erethylene and benzine, it can be extruded, injected or blow molded. Polystyrene has many building and household uses such as light switches and light plates. It is most recognizable in the form of polystyrene packaging.
Polystyrene has a history dating back to 1839, when a German apothecary named Eduard Simon isolated a substance for natural resin. However Simon did not realize what to do with this his discovery. It took another German by the name of Hermann Staudinger, in 1922 to realize that Simon’s discovery comprised of long chains of styrene molecules was a polymer. Hermann Straudinger was awarded the Nobel prize in 1953 for his research on polymers that stated that natural rubbers were made up of long repetitive chains of monomers that gave rubber its elasticity. Further he wrote that materials manufactured by the thermal processing of styrene were similar to rubber. They made up the high polymers including polystyrene.
In 1930 scientists at BASF (Badusche Anilin and Soda-Fabrik) developed a way to commercially manufacture polystyrene. In 1937 Dow Chemical introduced polystyrene to the US market. Styrofoam( a registered trademark of Dow Chemical) is the most recognizable form of foam polystyrene. Ray McIntire invented Styrofoam for Dow Chemical and stated his invention was accidental. He was trying to find a flexible electrical insulator around the time of WWII. Polystyrene was a good insulator but brittle. Mcintire tried to make a new rubber-like polymer and the result was foamed polystyrene with bubbles. It is 30 times lighter than regular polystyrene but has many of the same cushioning and insulating factors. Today Styrofoam is a common packaging material for all manner of goods. It is used in the safe shipment of product due to its cushioning affect and well as its lightweight. Commercially it is widely used to protect products prior to purchase.
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