A "miracle fiber"

After posting the history of spandex, i think it's time to talk about nylon.

In 1930, Wallace Carothers (the same man that invented neoprene) and other scientists working for DuPont Company studied chains of polymers, in an attempt to find a substitute for silk.

And they made it. 

DuPont designed nylon as a synthetic silk for women's stockings.

DuPont Company showed the first nylon women's hosiery at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair.

64 million pairs of nylon stocking were sold in United States.

Nylon is used in an enormous number of products today, including basketball nets, carpeting, clothing, fishing lines, strings for musical instruments, surgical sutures, tennis racquet strings, vehicle upholstery and many others.Nylon has even been to the moon. The astronauts who landed there,  in 1969, wore space suits containing nylon fibres and the flag that Neil Armstrong planted was made of nylon.

And now it's time for a chemistry class. A chemical demonstration of the synthesis of nylon in Carleton University, Canada.

I like this video because it makes it look easy and fun though i'm sure it's not! Don't try this at home...