The Strings of Our Lives free essay sample

Have you ever thought of what we are made of, what makes us who we are? Scientists all over the world are scratching their heads at this one question, constantly trying to find a solution. The String Theory is one idea that resounds with me. The theory in general describes that a ‘string’ makes up a quark, which in turn makes up a proton or neutron, which then creates an atom, and then, essentially, the world. I’d like to think that moments in my life have made me who I am, just like the little strings that make up the atom. Small, yet significant. Like the String Theory, and the world, there are endless possibilities in life, and the future seems to be indefinite. Like every child, I can remember feeling the need to grow up as fast as possible, when school and fun were one, and when life was full of happy endings. We will write a custom essay sample on The Strings of Our Lives or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page However, being a high school student changes all that, as grades and competition among friends becomes the focus of life. On paper, I’m a scholar and a talented student, but I don’t stop there. Grades and awards cannot define who I am. I’m a collection of different heritages and European ethnicities, and each and every one of them helps play a role in who I am today. I could not live without some form of literature, and covet I mythology of any kind. All of these interests are only small pieces of the strings that make me who I am. One moment in time can drastically change a life, no matter how long or short it is. One moment could throw the strings that make up life out of balance, forever changing the path of that life. As I think about these types of moments, one manages to surmount all the others. Last year, after years of uncertainty and confusion, I made the decision to pack up my life as a senior at my high school in Maine, and move half way across the country to South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to finish my last year of high school under my mother’s care. Most said that making a decision like this would be detrimental to my education and that it would make my life unnecessarily challenging, and I agreed with them. However, after moving to this new state, this new town, and this new school, I began to change my opinion. That decision allowed me to experience a copious amount of new cultures and activities and gave me the ability to meet hundreds of new people who have their own collections of strings to share with the world. So when someone says, ‘How could you?’ I say, ‘How could I not?’ After all, there are strings to be made. For everyone has strings; it’s what you create with them that defines you.

Roy Plunkett and the Invention of Teflon

Roy Plunkett and the Invention of Teflon Dr. Roy Plunkett discovered PTFE or polytetrafluoroethylene, the basis of Teflon ®, in April 1938. It’s one of those discoveries that happened by accident. Plunkett Discovers PTFE Plunkett held a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Master of Science degree, and his PhD in organic chemistry when he went to work at the DuPont research laboratories in Edison, New Jersey. He  was working with gases related to Freon ®Ã‚  refrigerants when he stumbled upon PTFE. Plunkett and his assistant, Jack Rebok, were charged with developing an alternative refrigerant and came up with tetrafluorethylene or TFE. They ended up making about 100 pounds of TFE and were faced with the dilemma of storing it all. They placed the TFE in small cylinders and froze them.  When they later checked on the refrigerant, they found the cylinders effectively empty, even though they felt heavy enough that they should still have been full. They cut one open and found that the TFE had polymerized into a white, waxy powder polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE resin. Plunkett was an inveterate scientist. He had this new substance on his hands, but what to do with it? It was slippery, chemically stable and had a high melting point. He began playing with it, attempting to find out if it would serve any useful purpose at all. Ultimately, the challenge was taken out of his hands when he was promoted and sent to a different division. The TFE was sent to DuPont’s Central Research Department. The scientists there were instructed to experiment with the substance, and Teflon ® was born. Teflon Properties The molecular weight of Teflon ® can exceed 30 million, making it one of the largest molecules known to man. A colorless, odorless powder, it is a fluoroplastic with many properties that  give it an increasingly wide range of uses. The surface is so slippery, virtually nothing sticks to it or is absorbed by it – the Guinness Book of World Records once listed it as the slipperiest substance on earth. It’s still the only known substance that a geckos feet cant stick to.   The Teflon Trademark PTFE was first marketed under the DuPont Teflon ® trademark in 1945.   No wonder Teflon ® was chosen to be used on non-stick cooking pans, but it was originally used only for industrial and military purposes because it was so expensive to make. The first non-stick pan using  Teflon ® was marketed in France as Tefal in 1954. The U.S. followed with its own Teflon ®-coated pan the Happy Pan in 1861. Teflon Today Teflon ® can be found just about everywhere these days: as a stain repellant in fabrics, carpets and furniture, in automobile windshield wipers, hair products, lightbulbs, eyeglasses, electrical wires and infrared decoy flares. As for those cooking pans, feel free to take a wire whisk or any other utensil to them – unlike in the old days, you won’t risk scratching the Teflon ® coating because its been improved. . Dr. Plunkett stayed with DuPont until his retirement in 1975. He died in 1994, but not before being inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame and the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame.