The sound of science

I recently learned a Dutch word, which I really liked: “Piepschuim”. A literal translation into English means “squeaking foam”. Would you have guessed that this refers to Styrofoam? I guess, everybody already made the experience of the sound of packing rubbing against each other. And if we think about it, it is rather characteristic.

So we already know part of the story, how this material came to life. I talked about the pharmacist Eduard Simon last week. This time the spotlight is on Otis Ray McIntire. 

He graduated from university in 1940 and then worked as an Engineer for Dow. Since in that time industry was in need of rubber, this was his field of investigation. His focus was on a good insulator for electrical components. Polystyrol was too brittle, but he thought he could enhance it by adding Isobuten to the polymerization. But instead of a rubber, he got a foam. So, not what he wanted, but still something very useful. This material will be called “Styrofoam” by Dow Chemicals and will revolutionize the house insulation industry.

But Ray was not the inventor though. He actually was the “reinventor” (even though he didn’t know it at the time). And guess, who invented it the first time: Carl Munters ??. When this was realized Dow bought the rights from Munters, branded the new produt as “Styrofoam” and extruded it in large amounts.

So, we can see, not only luck could have helped Ray and Dow, but also proper patent research. This is even more a valid statement these days, where there are good ideas all over the world every day. We should try to learn not only from our own experiments and research but from the others in the same amount. So lets connect the sound of the “Piepschuim” to the idea to remember to consider the science of others in the same amount than our own to improve ourselves as well as our surrounding.