High Performance Plastic
Plastics have been around since 1907, when chemist Leo Baekeland, an immigrant to the United States from Belgium, produced the first truly synthetic plastic, which he called Bakelite. By 1979, the annual volume of plastic produced in the United States overtook steel for the first time.
Now, new high-performance plastics and advanced composites (fancy versions of fiberglass) are set to transform products and production processes. Because they are entirely artificial, plastics and composites for specific uses can be tailor-made by scientists from the molecules upward.
The new plastics can be cheaper, lighter, and stronger than metals. They can lower manufacturing costs because they use less energy, they don't need painting, and they can reduce many parts into one molding.
Of course, plastics are already used in a whole variety of new applications, from domestic kettles and contact lenses to polyvinyl chloride pipes and safety glass. But now, high technology has given us the squeezable plastic ketchup bottle, the plastic army helmet, and the plastic bulletproof vest.
Recent years have also seen the invention of plastics that conduct electricity, plastics that change color with variations in temperature or voltage, plastics that can be washed away with water, and plastics that disappear after 60 days in sunlight without spoiling the environment.
But the two main areas to watch are cars and planes. General Motors says that 20% of its cars and 50% of its vans will have all-plastic bodies by 1990. The main purpose is to reduce weight and boost fuel economy. Advanced composites promise to revolutionize the aerospace industry. Such materials were behind recent successes with hu man-powered flight and the non-stop round-the-world trip by the Voyager aircraft. Thirty percent of the airframe and wings of the AV-8B Harrier jump-jet are made of composite materials.
New materials lie behind past, present, and promised advances in semiconductors, the very basis of the computer revolution. Transistors, integrated circuits, and the chip itself only came about because materials scientists learned how to process silicon from common beach sand. Now, new materials processes such as plasma etching and entirely new materials like gallium arsenide are creating a new generation of "superchips", which are faster and more powerful than today's chips. In the related sphere of photonics — in which light pulses are generated by lasers and transmitted by fiber-optic cables — advances are promising to make optical computing a reality.
Other exciting new materials include high-tech cements, which have already been used to make concrete bottle tops, brake shoes, springs, and even cement loud-speakers and armor-plating for tanks.
上一篇：科技翻译例文——贝氏炼钢法的发明
下一篇：科技翻译例文——数和数学
微信公众号搜索“译员”关注我们，每天为您推送翻译理论和技巧，外语学习及翻译招聘信息。