THE CHEMISTRY OF THINGS
Today's episode shows us how an experimental failure in chemistry research
can turn itself into a success and become part of our daily life.
Today we talk aboutů
ůpost-its!
They are all over the place, stuck on doors,computers
refrigerators and even on people.
No longer just yellow little squares of paper, they now come in many forms and colours:
they are Post-its, the pieces of paper that stick and unstick.
Their story begins in 1968 with a chemical company
which encouraged its employees to use 15% of their working time to test innovative ideas.
One of the employees, a chemist who worked with polymers,
tried to produce a stronger adhesive than the existing ones
by changing the proportions of the reagents in an adhesive mixture.
After some lab work doing what chemists do in the labs,
he did manage to get a new polymer adhesive,
but that was far from being strong glue:
it would stick, but unstick just as easily!
Over and over again!
It was interesting; it was different...
... and completely useless.
Who would want to glue a mug handle with an adhesive
that sticks and unsticks?
The failed glue didn't really have a useful application for years,
until someone suggested using it to stick bookmarks.
But success was not immediate, because nobody was willing to pay
for a pile of canary-yellow papers of doubtful usefulness.
The company then decided to distribute the product free
door-to-door in the U.S. city of Richmond for a year.
Next year there were already addicted consumers...
like me, and I bet, you!
Nowadays, they are one of the most sold office supplies in the world.
A chemical failure that made your day to day life easier!
To know more about the chemistry of post-its,
visit our website quimicadascoisas.org
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