Knock-resistant plastic in this ski suit keeps the wearer safe, and warm © Harry Semple/Culture24

Exhibition review - Culture 24's Year 10 intern, Harry Semple, goes to the Science Museum to find out all about plastics, in an exhibition that runs until January 1 2009.

As we approached the exhibition from the lift side, we were immediately taken by the striking red partitions and the plastic strips encompassing the exhibits. At the sight of all this plastic our immediate thought was, "Save the planet", but this was not to be.

In fact, many of the exhibits were all about where plastics are going, rather than how bad they are. By the end, we both knew a whole lot more about plastics than we had before.

We now use plastics for a huge range of things, quite often things we take for granted. Things like our drinks bottles, our computer screens, our packaging, and disposable cutlery are common to us and we use them and throw them away without thinking about why they are made of this incredibly versatile substance.

This printer enables us to not only print in plastic, but in 3d. © Harry Semple/Culture24

Yet there was a reason for the change to plastics. In the case of drinks bottles, glass drinks bottles are heavy, can break and are harder to recycle for new products. If you drop a plastic one, it does not break and what's more, it's lighter and can be made into a chair.

4% of the world's oil output is used in plastics, and it takes another 3-4% to complete the process and more than a third of packaging has some form of plastic in it. So should we really be using up our finite resources to make something that makes our daily lives only a little easier?

Some would say no. Experts say that oil is running out, and we don't really need these plastics. Others say we should make the most of this valuable resource and there may even become a time when plastic is one of our biggest friends.

This fully functional chandelier shows the age of modern writing in a whole new light. © Harry Semple/Culture24

We started by looking at the inventor of the first plastic, Leo Baekeland. Baekeland invented Bakelite, if you hadn't guessed. Bakelite is made of phenol-formaldehyde, which looks similar to coal tar soap in its raw form. At first, Bakelite was a dark, dreary substance, first coming only in brown, but later in dark colours such as dark green and burgundy

We had never realised the vast range of products Bakelite was used in, from tall elegant ashtrays, to small mantelpiece clocks made to look like marble or wood, and even a Bakelite coffin. However, we soon discovered that Bakelite is, after all, a very boring brown colour, one of the reasons, we thought, it was phased out.

Nylon, perhaps one of the most influential plastics of the 20th century, is used in many applications. Perhaps most well known were the first nylon stockings, which supposedly didn't make ladders or unravel. There were images showing women outside shops, sitting on pavements putting their new stockings on in front of crowds flocking to buy the new material.

This Bakelite coffin was the first made, and was incredibly light for its size. © Harry Semple/Culture24

The next nylon product was something we use every day: the Toothbrush. Originally, these were made of horsehair, but for most people of the era, the thought of putting bits of animal hair inside their mouths was horrible. Thus, nylon was used, and it was so much better. The caption read "Here's your toothbrush for the next 12 months!"

We suddenly thought, "Are plastics changing our lives?" The answer was “yes.” Over the years that the uses of plastic have been discovered, we have evolved with it. Our chairs have changed rapidly for example.

Toyota's I-unit concept car is a huge advance in modern transport. © Science Museum

Where once people may think a chair with a curved back and four legs was modern, we now have chairs that have no legs. Instead, the curves are continued to make the base, and this is the new modern design. Plastics, although we shape them into our designs, have shaped us, in the way of our design, and indeed, in the way we use them.

Perhaps an example of the future in plastic can be found in the Echo, a 'blob' of plastic in a box, which at first looks fairly unspectacular. But when your face moves closer to it, Echo responds to you and morphs to follow your movement.

The same could be said of the shape shifting plane, a plane made of incredibly flexible plastic which then turns rigid, enabling it to fold up, unfold and fly like a bird.

Then there's the Plastic Printer, which can print three-dimensional objects and could be the way forward because it can even replicate itself.

Finally, and perhaps my personal favourite, the Toyota I-unit, Toyota's concept car for the future, which uses plant fibres and plastics to make a car that can travel on road and then stand up so it can be used for conversations.

Bags like these are often not recyclable, but technology is improving to make this possible. © Science Museum.

Some plastics are even life saving, such as plastic blood, a revolutionary piece of engineering enabling someone who has lost a lot of blood to immediately have a transplant, or germ killers, slips of plastic allowing us to eradicate various germs that can kill, such as E. Coli.

But, in the time before these revolutionary inventions, many of us will continue to view plastic as a bad thing, polluting our world and filling it with rubbish. But in truth, plastics offer a way forward, and we should embrace them and use them. We can infuse them with natural plant fibres to make them more degradable and we can burn them for fuel.

For those that still want to see recycling of plastics, you will be pleased to hear that all of the partitions and plastic strips used in the exhibition will, after it is over in 2009, be melted down and used again to make…well, you name it.

Written by Culture24's Year 10 work experience intern, Harry Semple.