Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago

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From picnic baskets to a plastic bike, the world is saturated with polymers. But plastics are more than just cheap and nasty, they are the future of engineering. Explore the molecular science that transforms a liquid monomer like egg white into a solid, un-mouldable polymer, and why the sheer volume of plastic now exceeds that of steel worldwide.

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Only one scientist in thousands wins a Nobel Prize. Far fewer ever become household names. In this fascinating series, Brian Trueman looks at the work of scientists whose names are relatively unknown outside their own very specialist fields.

This film was first broadcast: 1983

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