Plastics
The term plastic can be used as both an adjective and a noun. As an adjective, the term refers to any material that can be shaped or molded, with or without the application of heat. In this respect, objects such as soft waxes, asphalt, and moist clays are said to be plastic.
As a noun, the term describes a natural or synthetic polymer. A polymer is a material whose molecules consist of very long chains of one or two repeating units known as monomers. As an example, the synthetic polymer called polyethylene consists of thousands of ethylene units joined to each other in long chains. If the letter E is taken to represent an ethylene unit (monomer), then the polymer polyethylene can be represented as:
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