Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Wall Street Journal and "Glass Transition"

Those are two terms that I never thought I would see together, but it has happened. Today's Wall Street Journal has an article about the compostable Sun-Chips bag that has been discussed before on this site.

The primary focus is on the noisiness, which they quantify at 95 decibels. But this is what had me in a jaw-dropping pose:
"So why is the packaging so loud? The new polymers have a higher "glass transition temperature," which is when a polymer goes from a harder, glasslike state to a rubber state. Because the transition to rubberiness happens a bit above room temperature, the bag is kind of crispy and crunchy..."
Imagine that! The Wall Street Journal actually using the term "glass transition temperature" and then defining it! I can't say this has never happened before (a search of their website produced zilch, but I don't think the search covers the entirety of the Journal's history, ditto for Google), but it was sure a shocker.

What's next, rheology? Non-newtonian viscosity? Viscoelasticity?

1 comment:

Eric F. Brown said...

Did a quick Google news search on those terms. Nothing came up in the mainstream media.