179 Polystyrene
Polystyrene (PS) is a synthetic aromatic hydrocarbon polymer made from monomer styrene. PS can be solid or foamed. It is one of the most widely used plastics.
The polymerization of styrene has been known since 1839, when German pharmacist Eduard Simon reported its conversion into a solid later named metastyrol. As late as 1930 little commercial use had been found for the polymer because of brittleness and crazing (minute cracking), which were caused by impurities that brought about the crosslinking of the polymer chains. By 1937 American chemist Robert Dreisbach and others at the Dow Chemical Company’s physics laboratory had obtained a purified styrene monomer through the dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene ...
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