Materials and the Environment Timeline

We had to choose two compounds to research in greater detail this semester from the timelines on page 3 of Materials and the Environment. I would like to know more about synthetic rubber and teflon/PTFE.

Synthetic Rubber came into prominence in 1922, just after the First World War and before the Great Depression. A major reason for its' rise over natural rubber was the blight of Brazilian rubber trees in the ten years before the rise of natural rubber. Another reason was burgeoning Communist Power Russia, who had decided to reduce dependence on Britain for resources, and therefore, they made synthetic rubber from petroleum in one project and from ethyl alcohol in the other. Finally, the First World War demonstrated that the massive war machines were going to need new sources of rubber, and it couldn't all be natural. America refused to buy British rubber after the Stevenson Act, and so DuPont finished up production of synthetic rubber for the States. Synthetic Rubber is man-made that is based of elastomers in a polymer group. Pictured is a roll of synthetic rubber sheets.

PTFE/Teflon was developed in 1943. PTFE is short form for polytetrafluoroethylene, a compound that DuPont created for nonstick surfaces. The compound posted is PTFE. It's also highly unreactive due to the strong "carbon-fluorine bonds." It was used in uranium enrichment plants in teh 1940s, and it is also used in pipes due to its' highly noncorrosive nature.

Class Assignment: 1/13/10

So Dr. Rood asked us to:

1) identify some federally funded program that you feel should/could be reduced or eliminated;

2) and identify some federally funded program that you feel should be maintained or even expanded.

Well, I hate to upset anyone with this heritage, but I personally think the Bureau of Indian Affairs should be cut entirely. They're a part of the country, why do we still feel a need to count them out and do special things for them. Personally, I feel that they should assimilate (as a people), and we move their programs to other departments, such as reservations to the Department of the Interior. The other services are just ensuring the rights for Indians that all other citizens get, so why not just take away those "protecting their rights" programs and make them become part of the country. Incorporate the Indian schools into regular districts and change their funding and such to under the Department of Education at different levels of government. Most of the services can be taken care of by local agencies or other preexisting departments. The BIA was necessary once, but now, Indians should just get off their high horse of being so important and assimilate. Everyone else has had to.

However, I do feel that their funding needs to redistributed among somewhere else. Namely, the funding once set aside for the Bureau of Indian Affairs should go to the US Department of Education for distribution among the states that have districts which are experiencing difficulty keeping up with national standards. A major problem is low teacher salaries in these districts. By using the former BIA money to make these locations more hospitable and favorable for new and young teachers, we might see improvements. The No Child Left Behind program could be retooled with this additional money being granted to troubled districts.