Fantastic Plastic _ Future script

FANTASTIC PLASTIC - A FUTURE NEAR YOU

FINAL SCRIPT

NARRATION DIALOGUE

Imagine … man-made materials that will out-strip human muscles … … and might even get to look like us.

Materials so advanced we haven’t even thought of ways to use them…

“We still don’t … “

Materials that can rescue us from the brink of death… … that will let our bodies control their surroundings … …. And maybe even have sex with someone half a world away. It’s all coming soon to a future near you

FANTASTIC PLASTIC: A Future Near You

We call them plastics, or polymers, and they’re so much a part of our lives that we don’t even see them anymore. Take a look around, though, and you’ll find them everywhere. Plastics are about to change our lives in ways we can barely imagine… because they’re becoming more like us … and we’re becoming more like them. The German town of Freiburg1 stands at a new frontier of plastic magic… a place where the line between Man and materials is about to become blurred. Marianne Schulzki can’t wait to cross that line. When Marianne bites on anything, it bites her right back.

Sync: “I get a terrible pain, here in the top part of my jaw when I bite into anything. I just can’t stand it anymore. I’m going to have to go to the clinic.” Major dental work has left her with a gaping hole in her jawbone, and sensitive nerves have been exposed. So Marianne’s agreed to have an experimental implant … a mixture of her own living cells and some advanced plastics. Can polymer science end her days of agony? Half a world away, in New Zealand, plastics are about to star in another hospital drama …and it’s a genuine life-or-death emergency. Margaret Fraser’s chiropractor has discovered there’s a medical timebomb ticking away inside her.

Sync: “He took an x-ray and that’s when he told me – “do you know you have got an aneurysm Mrs. Fraser” which I didn’t know and neither did my doctor of course.” A scan confirms the bad news. There’s a huge bulge … an aneurysm .. in the main pipeline that carries blood to Margaret’s legs. It’s very dangerous.

Sync: “If the aneurysm is not treated it will gradually increase over the years and as it does so the risk that it will rupture increases steadily as well, so given enough time it is almost certain that Mrs. Fraser’s aneurysm will rupture and she stands a high likelihood that she will die from that event.”

Sync: “ If it bursts then that’s it, I’m a goner.” Margaret is too old and frail for major surgery, so this time her number could really be up … but there’s still a chance that some clever plastics can save her life. Plastics could also be about to save the lives of some homeless animals … and …unless her courage fails her, Nikki Vallance. The young zoologist2has agreed to do a skydive to raise money for an animal shelter … and she’s scared stiff.

Sync: “well didn’t get much sleep much last night because I am absolutely terrified. The idea of leaping off high things is not something that appeals to me but I am going to do it anyway, and hopefully it will go all right. They tell me it is safer than crossing the road, so hopefully they’re right and it will be okay tomorrow.” Parachutists stake their lives on plastics every time they jump. In the early days most chutes were made of silk.3 But silk often gets mouldy in damp weather … and that can be VERY bad news. It’s less of a problem with today’s chutes, which are made of nylon4,

But the laws of gravity still apply, and when your life is hanging by a plastic thread, things can still go horribly wrong… You could regret doing that jump for the rest of your life. All 20 seconds of it…. A 40 square metre nylon canopy folds down to the size of a pillow5… yet the entire thing weighs only a few kilos6. And every part of a modern chute is made of tough plastics7.

Each of the 40 polymer lines8 in a tandem chute can hold 380 kilogrammes9 …that’s the weight of a grand piano! Nikki Vallance has never done a parachute jump … yet she’s about to sky-dive from three kilometres up.10 For the next hour she’ll be haunted by a nightmare image of what can happen when a Good Jump Goes Bad. We may stake our lives on plastic … yet we still think of it as the poor cousin of real stuff like metal or wood. That’s partly because of how we use plastics. Even the word has come to mean cheap, disposable, worthless. But plastics can be beautiful … designers love to use them because they’re so easy to shape. The artistic face of plastics fascinates Paola Antonelli. Which is maybe not surprising, since she’s a curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art11.

Sync: “The new material was so excited that many designers and many manufacturers were trying to build a whole world of plastics and then people couldn’t stand it anymore and the plastics that had been done in the sixties started becoming yellow and not being so clear anymore and there was a moment of complete reject and its only lately in the past 10 years that plastics has come back. You know in a way its about anything goes it’s a little bit like how fashion is today it’s a matter of composition it’s a matter of the influence of hip hop music the designer can pick and choose as opposed to going to the engineer and having limited choice of materials available.” Mass production means that just about anyone can afford a plastic work of art…. You just have to be prepared to share the pleasure with a few thousand others.. Karim Rashid’s chess sets are an example of this new type of democracy in action.

Sync: “Democratic design is that I can walk down a store like a you know a K-Mart or Woolworth’s or a Target or any of these kind of stores and actually buy really beautiful product that can reach a huge audience. And there’s probably not a lot of materials that can do that. If I had to choose one material to work with I would choose plastic because plastic is to me the material of today and really, the material of the next century.” But plastics are the LAST choice for some people … they make them ill. A small percentage of the population are sensitive to things made from petrochemicals, and that includes plastics. It’s almost impossible to avoid contact with oil-based products in a modern society. Many researchers stop short of recognizing the condition as a disease … but others have no doubt that the victims really are sick.

Sync: “We’re living in a century where we are exposed to a lot more than we were exposed to before and a lot of this a lot of products that we have now that are a big boon to mankind and are so much better than what we’ve had there is a downside to these as well. And so we are now finding that some of the more sensitive patients seem to be reacting to these these products.” Some of these products trigger a cascade of symptoms in patients like Foree Hunsicker. She has multiple allergies to hydrocarbons. Even a dab of perfume could make her sick.

Sync: “Perfume is made of petrochemicals and there may be 400 petrochemicals in that perfume and that shows significant problems it can cause neurotoxicity it can cause other things as well”. One possibility that worries experts like Dr Baird is that all of us might be sensitive to these materials to some degree… maybe we just haven’t discovered it yet. Most of us use plastics and other petrochemical products without any problems… but they can make sensitive people very ill.12 However, their symptoms are so vague, it’s hard to identify what’s causing them.

Sync: “They get sick they may get a headache they may have what they call brain fog where they just can not think. They their balance may go go off and they just may feel nauseated and if they are around a lot of these problems then all of a sudden their other allergies to food whatever seems to get worse. What I feel is the body keeps fighting this, and it keeps turning out the immune system to fight it. At some point the immune system says I’ve had enough, I’m tired and then all of a sudden you don’t have any immune system with which you can fight other things in the atmosphere, in the environment.” Foree has built her own environment … one that’s totally free from soft plastics and insecticides.13

Sync: “We determined that we would not use wood in the framing or anything we’d use steel because we’d have no termite problem that kind of thing.. Then we did not want to use sheet-rock because there is an awful lot of glue in it that we can’t tolerate so we used old fashioned plaster.. Stucco on the outside.” Foree trained as a painter, but when the oils and turpentine sent her immune system into a tailspin she had to give it up. She’s built a new world for herself now, but she can never let her guard down.

Sync: “Before I bought anything I would either get a cushion from here or a door from there or a door from something else and put it beside my bed and sleep with it at least 2 nights and see how I felt when I woke up in the morning.” And it’s not just Foree’s environment that’s threatened by petrochemical products. Waste plastics are a big part of the urban waste problem. Americans use more than 2 million plastic bottles every HOUR … and enough plastic film every year to shrink-wrap an area the size of France, Belgium and the Netherlands!14 These materials are built to last, and they will… maybe as long as 700 years.15 One solution to that problem is to make plastics that will rot, like paper. Biodegradable plastics do exist.15 Often they are made from natural polymers like corn starch16. When the temperature inside the dump rises17, they soften and bacteria start to eat them18. Within a couple of months19 there’s nothing to show they ever existed, and that’s GOT to be good for the environment. Another solution is to melt the waste plastics down and use them again. At the German car-maker BMW, they’ve been recycling plastics for years.20

Sync: “There should be no matter of discussions if we make the plastics out of old oil which has been in the ground for millions of years or we use plastics which has been in production 10 years ago for new part.” What’s about to happen isn’t pretty. The folks at BMW are so proud of their recycling plant, they cheerfully trash brand-new luxury cars to show how the system works. Vehicles can be a rich source of plastic scrap … the typical big car contains about 130 kilogrammes of the stuff.21 European nations are getting serious about recycling22, but they’ve hit a problem. When a plastic is melted down, other types of plastic and bits of paint contaminate the mix23, so it’s never quite as good as new. That’s why it’s kept out of sight, inside bumpers or engine compartment But the technology’s improving .. and the completely recyclable car may be just around the corner. 24 Doctors are planning some far more advanced recycling just down the road from the BMW plant, in Freiburg,. They’re going to recycle parts of Marianne Schulzki to fill the gaping hole in her jawbone. Her doctor has two options. He can try a new procedure based on a plastic implant, or… more chillingly … borrow a piece of bone from her chin to make a plug..

Sync:“There are two nerves coming out here that distribute sensitivity and these nerves often get disturbed and the operation is rather painful and it’s also quite an experience if you remove the bone here with a hammer and a chisel.” … a masterpiece of understatement that leaves Marianne with no doubts about which option she’s going to choose. For the plastic implant they’ll need to take only a sliver of periosteum from her … that’s the skin-like tissue around living bone25. The scientists will culture the tissue and create a series of plugs that they’ll insert into the cavity. Marianne’s periosteum contains living bone cells that can be extracted … then grown around a plastic scaffold26.

Sync: “This bone replacement has very important characteristic this is a living bone replacement material with bone forming cells and bone forming potential.” That means the bone cells should keep on growing once they’ve been put back into Marianne’s body. The idea’s simple. Actually doing it is the hard bit. First the researchers have to extract healthy bone cells from Marianne’s tissue, then keep them healthy by fooling them into thinking they’re still part of her. When there’s a good crop of new cells, they’re introduced to their co-stars in the operation, delicate polymer scaffolds. The BioTissue engineers seed the cells into the scaffolds. .26 After six weeks of cultivation in the lab, the polymer plugs and their precious payload are ready for action. 27 The only question now is, will they be accepted by Marianne’s body?. In New Zealand, Margaret Fraser’s body is in serious trouble. The x-rays show there’s a dangerous swelling in her aorta that could burst at any time. It’s a life-threatening emergency … especially as major surgery is not an option.

Sync: “When I heard that if they open you up you know the whole procedure, a six hour operation then I thought myself ‘my’ that’s a long time – would I survive it with my breathing and everything you know..” Fortunately for Margaret, her doctors are looking at another option … a procedure that would use a special plastic graft to repair her aorta from the inside. The graft will have to be an exact fit, with no leaking or movement. It will slide inside the body through two small incisions and up into the aorta. They’ll only get one shot at this, so it requires some precision manufacturing.

Sync: “Basically it’s a very cleverly constructed plastic tube that means we can thread this up through a very small hole in the patient’s groin to seal off the aneurysm. The plastic actually gets incorporated into the blood vessel so it becomes a part of the body. This is a huge advantage because it means that the patients have a much less invasive procedure and recover a lot quicker from a aneurysm surgery”. So it’s possible they can save Margaret’s life with plastics.

Sync: “Now they are going to do the new procedure no I am not scared, no, not one bit.” Out at the airfield, Nikki Vallance is scared out of her mind. She’s about to do her very first sky dive, to raise money for charity. Her life will depend entirely on plastics.

Sync: “What’s, you know, if, I mean, assuming all things are going well, great. What if something goes….what is the worst thing that can happen? The worst thing that can happen? Well we are sky diving, it is an adventure sport, OK I mean the worst, absolute worst thing that can happen is we could end up dead. But so long as we keep within our requirements and don’t go pushing the limits it can be very, very safe. Okay. How reliable are these parachutes? With our equipment, canopies have a shelf life of between 1500 and 2000 jumps”. Okay? She’s not okay. Nikki’s survival will depend on a plastic harness and a few buckles. The good news is … it’s strong enough to hold FOUR Nikkis.28 What I’ll do is I’ll just get this reasonably firm at the moment, then we’ll head out to the aircraft and we’ll have a practice at the aircraft and it’ll slip around into place, just adjust it up just nice where we want it to be. Okay. Okay that’s chest strap and we want you to put your thumbs underneath when you climb out the door. Like that? Okay and they stay locked under there until we’re in free-fall and you get that tap on the shoulder from me. Okay. Okay. Where are your thumbs going to be? Thumbs are under there. Right, now head right back, (yep) legs right back, knees back that’s the one. As soon as you’re in that position we’ll roll out the door, (yep) hold that position, and when you feel the tap (then like that) just bring them out, out there, look around, big smiles, woo hoo alright we’re flying (yeah), Okay, take your weight, stand up. Nikki’s life will depend on the fact that plastics are the strong, silent type. They always do what’s expected of them, with no surprises. The problem is, that’s not always true. We all know that plastics are good insulators 29 … that’s why we wrap them around wiring to prevent arcing and short circuits. Even a thin sheet of plastic can block hundreds of thousands of volts. 30 But in the 1970s researchers discovered that some plastics conduct electricity.31 Chemist Alan MacDiarmid was in Tokyo for a conference. To entertain his guest, scientist Hideki Shirakawa showed him a silvery plastic … polyacetylene 32… that a student had made by accident in his lab. “It is completely organic material” MacDiarmid thought it looked like a metal, so he took it home to investigate. He was amazed to find it conducted electricity.

Sync: “We started adding other chemicals to it and one we added was the chemical iodine and immediately within 2 or three minutes at room temperature, the conductivity increased millions of times from being an insulator, to being semi-conductor and up to the metallic regime.” And polymers had another big surprise in store. A physicist at Cambridge University in England discovered by accident that some polymers can emit light.33 Today Jeremy Burroughes and his team can make polymers that produce almost any colour34. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is the fact that nobody had noticed before that polymers can be persuaded to light up.

Sync: “The next people to make the next sets of devices couldn’t make them very bright so everyone assumed I must have been working in the pitch black to see them. In actual fact I was working in a lab much better lit than we are currently working in the moment here and this thing was glowing about 6 feet away and yeah I would have had to be blind to miss it it was that bright.” The bright sparks of the polymer world convert electricity to light. If one side of a thin polymer film is positive, and the other negative, the molecules in the middle get excited. It’s the comedown after all that excitement that produces light. Before long this new technology could give us enormous, flexible tv and computer screens that can be sprayed onto a surface, just like paint.

Sync: “Now with this process you can have an inkjet printing head and you can pass the head over the substraight and it can fly out the red drops and then the green drops and then the blue drops into the desired places and all done in one pass.” We’re learning how to extend the powers of plastics … and soon they might return the favour and extend ours. Clever polymers that can see, taste, smell, and even move, could begin to enhance our senses in unexpected ways. The killer application of the 21st century could be Teledildonics 35… turning on for virtual sex that’s as close to the real thing as it gets… Plastics that conduct electricity can be made into complete electronic components… even computer chips.36 Researchers at Plastic Logic in Cambridge, England, are using them to develop spray-on computing power that’s so cheap it can be used, then thrown away.37

Sync: “We are making circuits out of plastic You think its not something you imagine that plastics is going to be used for but we’re making electronic devices from plastic so we can see we can see, we can see using plastic to make things think you couldn’t imagine was possible before.”

Sync: ‘We still don’t know what it’s going to be used for this is why it is so cutting edge it could be anything anything that required flexible low cost thinking machines.” That could be a yoghurt container that tells you when it’s passed its expiry date …. A packet that reminds you to take your pill … maybe someday a credit card that’s so smart it even lets you win at chess.

Sync: For instance your bank card could tell you your bank balance your last 5 transactions could have a calculator build in could actually have security code features built in it could literally have some processing power on the card as well as displays and this sort of plastic electronics is really well adapted towards that.” These super-smart polymers will also change the way we think about robots. Dialogue on archive tape: “It must be the loveliest, softest thing you’ve ever made for me, and fits in all the right places, with lots and lots of star sapphires.” Forget the whirring mechanical monsters of science fiction … these clockwork clunkers just aren’t going to happen. We’ll be using strips of bendy plastic instead of cogs and hydraulics… … polymer muscles that work just like our own.38 YosEPH Bar-Cohen’s team at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have already made a robot hand using electroactive polymers. If it all seems a little … underwhelming … remember, it’s still early days.

Sync: “You’re talking about a situation like the car the first car you could run faster than the car the only convenient thing is you’re sitting on a chair that is moving forward so you don’t have to walk hard but today’s car no way compare to what we used to have you’re talking about the same thing here we’re talking about here as an example of a material that is relatively soft but it behaves just like my finger.”

Sync: “If we can bring the level of performance to the point that we can make a robotic arm and that arm could arm wrestle with human and win we are talking about a major major achievement because all of this ideas suddenly become reality rather than science fiction.” When he finally gets there, Yoseph Bar-Cohen aims to make a robot that looks and moves like a human being. In the meantime he’s shooting for an easier target… robot insects.

Sync: “Initially maybe we can think of insects even just butterfly as a robot if we can make a butterfly do them by this materials that is incredible it could be just a flying sensor. Nowdays we are concerned about biological warfare, chemical warfare imagine if we have the whole environment filled with those flying sensors. But it’s sensors of a very different kind that are likely to get people into a flap before too long. Clever, sensing plastics could be built into male or female body suits to give the wearer instant access to a sexual partner on the internet. In the new field of Teledildonics, plastic sensors would send and respond to body signals. . Each partner’s body suit would transmit information to the other via the net, and respond to the signal coming back … It’s controversial, and it’s not exactly romantic … but sex doesn’t get any safer than this…. We may have to wait a while before we let clever plastics into the private corners of our lives, but in the meantime they’re having an impact in less controversial ways. At the University of Pisa in Italy, Professor Danilo de Rossi is training polymer sensors to fight pirates… olive oil pirates, that is. Tuscany claims to produce the best olive oil in the world … but much of the oil claiming to be Tuscan was made somewhere else.

Sync: “All around the world you find Tuscan olive oil which is sometimes bottled in Tuscany at least minimum and so a machine that would help panelists to make a better job would be very important.” Tuscans take their olive oil very seriously, but they’re going to need help from the scientists to protect their markets. At present the only way to judge whether an olive oil is genuine is to get an expert to taste it 39… and they are fairly thin on the ground. What’s more, the human palate goes into sensory overload after it’s tasted only a few samples. 40 Another demanding day at the office. It’s a slow, laborious business … but Professor de Rossi thinks plastics can provide a short cut.

Sync: “We have at least 40- 45 different polymer the point is we have to try them ……… and to see which one is more keen to give you information on olive oil the other one is keen to give you something else.” His plastic taster has to be trained to recognise hundreds of different olive oils … then he has to tell it which are genuine Tuscan and which are fakes. So the robot taster won’t be replacing humans any time soon. But when it does, it might even come equipped with a personality. The olymer prof is designing a face that reacts to the taste of different oils. It’s on manual right now, but de Rossi plans to use plastic muscles that will make it move just like the real thing. By then it should have a full-time job as an oil taster .. and maybe even a social security number..

Sync: “We learn how to use artificial muscle in the complex system because this face is going to have 48 muscles all told that’s the challenging engineering problem. In addition we make something which express something and for us it’s a break between brain science and technology.” De Rossi’s plans for a humanoid polymer face feature in Yosi Bar-Cohen’s image of the future.

Sync: My vision right now is to you know you can come to a store and see flowers and actually they are artificial and you it takes you a few minutes to judge is it real or artificial. What I’m envisioning you see maybe either a group of robots sitting somewhere or doing something and you look closely and you say oh my gosh those are robots. Hopefully the development will be to that level.” These would be true androids … robots that look just like us, built partly from human tissue, partly from synthetic materials. In Freiburg, Germany, scientists are about to try the same thing, though on a very small scale. It’s time for Marianne Schulzki to receive her bone implants. They’re partly her own tissue, partly plastic. For the past six weeks some of her own bone cells have been growing steadily around plastic scaffolds in the lab. Now the surgical team is ready to implant them in the hole in her jawbone. The red blobs are living things … parts of Marianne that have been cultured outside her body.. If everything goes well, her body will welcome them home. The polymer framework that’s holding the cells in place is like any other scaffold. As soon as the building blocks are in place, Marianne’s body will start to dismantle it. Only the healthy, growing bone cells will be left..41 Two months later … and her life has been turned around completely. The grafts have taken, and the hole in her jaw has closed up. “It’s completely changed the way my jaw feels, it’s much more stable. Now if I touch my face it feels completely different to how it was before the operation.” Marianne’s decided to put her implants to the ultimate test. Two months ago, a hot drink would have jolted the nerves in her jaw into action, and she’d have been in agony. So has the treatment really worked? It’s another small victory for polymers and the tissue engineers. At the National University of Singapore, the bioengineers are working on something even more ambitious … complete replacement parts.42 It’s an idea that pushes polymer engineering to the limit.

Sync: “There is at the moment a bottle neck in terms of the scaffold, the polyembric bio-material scaffold, that needs to be discovered, that needs to be invented for specific cell type”. Already they’re using scans to create 3-D images of existing bones45 So they can build exact replicas from polymers.45 They’re working on hard scaffolds for bone, softer ones for skin. After the patient’s bone cells take up residence, the end result should be a perfect replacement jawbone..45 Scientists like Professor Teoh Swee Hin predict a big future for spare-part surgery as the pieces of the polymer puzzle fall into place.

Sync: “Then we can put them together and hopefully, the next 3 or 4 years we put the whole picture in and that would be wonderful.” But Margaret Fraser can’t wait for the biotissue boffins to come to her rescue. Unless her surgeons can repair her damaged aorta with a plastic graft she’ll live with the constant danger of a sudden and painful death. Margaret knows the risks but she’s putting on a brave face.

Sync “I‘ve got great faith in my doctors. Great faith in my surgeon. Now I’m just going to leave it in his hands, hope for the best., that’s all. The surgeons know they HAVE to fix that swollen aorta. They also know she is not strong enough for open surgery , so they’re going to try and repair it from the inside.… They’ll thread an inserter through her groin to deliver part of a plastic graft into her aorta. Then, they’ll use another inserter to deliver the second part of the graft, and take the pressure off that bulging wall. For Margaret Fraser a length of plastic could mean the difference between life and death.

Sync “ OK, Pete’s got our helmets, so we’ll just slide back into our little corner here and that’s us, we’re all set.” “Well, there’s no backing out now.” I”t’s a one-way ticket.” Nikki Vallance is about to stake her life on plastics too … It’s time for her first sky dive … from more than three kilometres high. 43 Nikki’s putting on a brave face, but she’s all too aware of what stands between her and a very messy death.

Sync: ”Plastic, plastic, plastic, metal. It’s the only metal bit on her. The rest is all plastic.” Nikki doesn’t share the other chutist’s blind faith in the marvels of man-made fibres…. And while the single-engined plane struggles up to more than 3 thousand metres, she has plenty of time to call the whole thing off. Suddenly they’re at the top of their climb. There’s only one way to go now, and it’s down. And there’s only one scary image on Nikki’s mind. It’s decision time… Will she stay in the plane… or can she force herself to step out into 3 kilometres of thin air? The operation to carry out emergency repairs on Margaret Fraser’s swollen aorta is underway. Plastics are in the starring role … but they’re also playing most of the minor parts. Modern surgery would be impossible without plastics .. they’re everywhere, from the maze of tubing, to the fine thread that will close the incisions at the end of the operation. The plastic inserter is coated with Teflon, the same non-stick polymer that’s found in the kitchen. That’s lubricated with another polymer, silicone, to help it slip along Margaret’s arteries. The surgeons are working almost blind, with only fuzzy X-rays and scans to guide them as the first inserter slides into position. It has to reach an exact spot above the damaged part of the aorta, or the plastic graft won’t work. When the surgeon decides the main body of the graft is in exactly the right position, he releases it from the inserter. This is the critical moment. If the plastic tubing hasn’t deployed properly, they’ll have to open up Mrs Fraser’s abdomen44 … she might not survive that. An X-ray shows the plastic graft is locked in place exactly where it should be, inside the aorta. That means it’s safe to thread the second part of the graft through the other artery, and lock it inside the first segment. Once the inserters are removed, a final X-ray shows the team exactly what they were hoping to see … there’s no sign of the swelling that was so obvious on the earlier X-rays. Thanks to some delicate surgery … and some clever plastics … Margaret’s been given a last-minute reprieve. Only two weeks later, she’s ready to do battle with her friends at Bingo … thanks to her new graft.

Sync: “This piece of plastic that’s been put inside me, it has saved my life, if it hadn’t been for that, if the aneurysm had burst I wouldn’t have been here today.” Margaret will be wearing that clever piece of plastic inside her for the rest of her life. It’s possible that in the near future we’ll all be wearing even cleverer plastics… but on the outside. An Italian company, Milior45, is experimenting with fabrics impregnated with electro-sensitive polymers. 46 The result could be something completely new in fashion … garments that interact with the wearer47.

Sync: It’s an area that overlaps Professor de Rossi’s work with sensing polymers… and it opens up the possibility of some truly mutant materials appearing on the fashion scene. We could some day have fabrics that change their color or texture to match the mood of the wearer. “Feeling blue” or “in the pink” will mean just that. Intelligent fabrics will open up a world of interactive clothing where nothing ever stays the same. That’s in the future.. But there’s already a garment that is seriously smart..

Sync: “We have a leotard which can sense body movements on one side and it can also sense vital sign ECG respiration and heart beat and all this system may have a different uses in a sense you can control external devices or external system by your body movement like music sound but you can also track your body movement in sports or in dancing and you can do even more than that you can track body vital sign.” A suit impregnanted with sensing polymers could turn the dancer’s body into a musical instrument. Her movements would control the music, instead of the other way round. Imagine a performance where the dancer is also the composer and the musician … and all at the same time. Intelligent clothing could play a vital role in the military too. Even in the confusion of battle, a commander would be able to monitor every soldier. The plastic sensors would give a constant readout of their mental and physical condition.48 Three kilometres49 above the airfield it’s easy to detect Nikki’s condition. She’s just seconds away from her first sky dive, and her vital signs are all in the red zone. The drogue keeps their speed down to around 200 kilometres an hour.50 At this speed, 2 kilometres of free-fall51 will last just 40 seconds.52 A sheet of plastic not much thicker than a garbage bag 53 Has snatched their speed back to around 20 kilometres an hour. 54 Nikki put her faith in a bunch of man-made molecules, and it’s paid off. Now the people who sponsored her jump will have to pay up.

Sync: “That was awesome, yeah, absolutely unreal, that was wicked, terrifying but great”. Which pretty well sums up our relationship with plastics. For some, they’re literally lifesavers … yet for others they make life a misery. Man-made materials can improve our quality of life … or make it completely unbearable. Polymer chemistry is taking us on a wild ride into the unknown, where only one thing is certain. In a future near you, there’ll be even more plastics in us … and even more of us in those fantastic plastics.

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