week 5

This week we learned about how to change a design of a material so that the particular material could be better than before.

Let's take hair dryer as an example!

🔎The first hair dryer was made by Alexander-Ferdinand Godefroy in the year 1890. The         hair dryer he created was very big and bulky and made out of metal. It need to take         hours to dry the hair depending on the hair.

🔎After 30 years, Handy Hannah improved the hair dryer to be smaller with a wooden         handle so that it is easy to grip. However, it is heavy as the weigh is close to 1kg ,not             safe as several accidents involving overheating and electrocution have occurred and         the airflow very weak.

🔎Later, new hair dryer were redesigned and improved in 1930 and it called Hawkins             Supreme. It was made out of only plastic and wood. Now it's lighter, easier to carry, and      having strong airflow, so we can now blow-dry our hair in just a few minutes.

Hair dryer are now become widely known as it follow the the process below :

(blackboard, week 5 lecture slide)

From this process, we learned that when designing a chemical products, we need to consider not only what materials are used, but also what changes can be made in the design to enjoy the properties of a material as much as possible.

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After Dr.Noel introduced a few more examples, we were assigned a task. Our group need to discuss about a material can be used to 

• as a replacement to a material in an existing product without any significant changes in the design

 • to enhance the functionality of an existing product through some changes in the design.

We will decided to use nylon as our material.

Name of material	Nylon
Chemical Name	Polyamide Plastic
General Description	Nylon is a thermoplastic silky material, first used commercially in a nylon-bristled toothbrush in 1938 followed more famously by women’s stockings in 1940. It is made of polyamide (PA) and was the first commercially successful synthetic polymer. Nylon was intended to be a synthetic replacement for silk and substituted for it in many different products after silk became scarce during World War II. It replaced silk in military applications such as parachutes and flak vests and was used in many types of vehicle tires.
General Properties	– Customized highly elastic to viscoelastic grades in a range of different densities and hardnesses   – Excellent adhesion to surfaces of other polyurethanes, metals and other technical plastics
Opportunities	Nylon is still used today to make parachute canopies due to its elasticity, strength, resistance to mildew and availability. Nylon is ideal for projects that require flexible plastic with the ability to be very lustrous, semi-lustrous or dull.
Information extracted from datasheet provided by Eastman Chemical (Singapore):  https://eliser.lib.sp.edu.sg/xmlui/bitstream/get/16734/1/Nylon.pdf
Discuss among the group how this material can be used as a direct replacement to a material in an existing product without any significant changes in the design    Instead of a normal cotton exercise shirt, it can be replaced by nylon. As nylon can dry faster when it is wet, which is ideal when after running, your shirt would be able to be dry relatively quickly after a duration. At the same time, Nylon doesn’t absorb as much water or perspiration compared to cotton, hence it would be able to maintain its lightweight even when it's drenched in water.
Discuss among the group how this material can be used to enhance the functionality of an existing product through some changes in the design.     We used a cotton t-shirt as a reference, in order to make it suitable for running and at the same time comfortable to the touch, we decided to implement 2 layers of materials for the cotton t-shirt- the outer layer being Cotton and the inner layer being Nylon. The Cotton outer layer gives the shirt a smooth and soft looking design, with the inner layer being nylon. Nylon is used as it helps to absorb water or perspiration from the body when it is produced when exercising or doing vigorous training, preventing the shirt from being wet on the outside as the nylon would absorb most of the water leaving the shirt to be dry. At the same time with a nylon inner layer, it gives the user much more flexibility as it can bend easily.

Reflection :

We learned about how we can change the design of an item to improve its functionality. We did this by first researching on certain materials that were good substitutes for other materials. We then found nylon and after reading on its properties and opportunities, we were able to come up with the idea of using nylon to create an exercise shirt. As a group, we have managed to discuss coherently and split our workload, yet be updated on what we have done. One of the key takeaways from this lesson was how designs of a certain item we thought could not be changed, could actually be changed for better functionality. This opens up our minds to be more innovative and come up with more ideas of substitution of items to make them better. We also managed to practice teamwork and communication.