Synthetic Fibers Nylon and Rayon (1949)

[Music] [Applause] e [Music] see you can do it after all I didn't say you couldn't yes boys this is it this is a synthetic fiber we call it rayon you mean we make cloth out of that yes we do take that sport shirt Bob is wearing it's made of rayon fiber could you tell us just House made yes we want to tell the class about it well it's quite a story we make rayon from wood you know but well have you ever seen a spider spinning a web oh yes of course well when we make this rayon fiber we're imitating a spider spinning a wet the spider makes a liquid in its body when it spins the thread for its web it forces this liquid out through tiny holes called spinettes this makes a fine thread now you know how silk is made yes we've had that well then you know how the silk worm makes a fiber now we make this rayon fiber and somewhat the same way rayon begins as wood the first step is to to break up logs into pulp this is done here at a pulp Mill in this Mill the wood is chopped up and cooked it comes out looking like this here here's a piece of wood pulp this is still wood though it looks like blotting paper now this goes to the rayon Mill where they put it into tanks the pulp comes to the mail in large sheets they put these sheets into a tank then they fill the tank with a chemical after the pulp is soaked in this bath for a while they squeeze out some of the chemical and it's ready for the next step they take it out and drop it down through a hole to the floor below the pulp drops right down into a shredding machine this machine breaks it up into small pieces over here is another Shredder just like it and this man is getting ready to empty it when the pulp comes comes out it's broken up into fluffy crumbs and if we look inside we can see the Turning paddles that do the work now the crumbs go down a chute into a room where they age for a couple of days then from the Aging room the crumbs drop into another machine this is something like a churn in these the CR thumbs are thoroughly churned together with another chemical called carbon disulfide when it comes out of this churn it's no longer wood pulp but something different we have some of it here see here now the next step is to dissolve this in another chemical it quickly becomes a thick liquid like this now we're ready to make it into a fiber I'll show you again how it works this is an acid bath we use this tube as a spinette we draw in some of the Liquid Force it out through the the tiny hole in the end of the tube the acid hardens it and here's our rayon fiber now in the mill they do the same thing on this spinning machine this machine has many spinettes he's lifting up one of them now this is the spinnerette and if we look closely at the end of it we see it has many tiny holes with liquid oozing out of them now he's putting the spinnerette down into the acid bat and here's the fiber forming the liquid is forced out through the holes in the spinnerette to form these filaments the filaments are drawn together into a single fiber and this is Twisted into a strand of rayon yarn it goes down into this box these men are taking taking cakes of yarn out of the machine they call this doing whenever enough yarn has been wound into a box they open it up and take out the cake a full cake of rayon yarn ready to be washed and dried and woven into cloth does that tell you how we make cloth from wood J yes it gives me a pretty good idea say Mr nordon we make cloth from coal too don't we is that the same thing cloth from coold well not quite here's a piece of a cloth we make from coal and other things it's called nylon but how can a soft thing like this come from a hard thing like a piece of coal well boys it's a long story but it does begin with coal just ordinary coal from the mines this goes to a Coke oven here it is broken down into a number of things one of these is col tire and from cold Tire we get a number of chemicals from from this after a long series of steps we get these two substances this is a dipic acid and this is hexamethylene diamine hexa hexa say Mr Norton how can you remember a name like that well you get used to those names when you use them every day now these chemicals make nylon first we mix them together in a little water this makes a liquid we call nylon salt now at the nylon plant this liquid is made in large tanks then it is piped into an evaporating tank here some of the water is boiled away next it is piped into a room full of large hes that are something like pressure cookers the cookers are controlled by the instruments on this panel and this man is starting to cook a batch he has ready in this vessel here it Cooks under heat and pressure this causes an important chemical change the nylon comes out of the bottom of the cooker as a wide White Strip This is solid nylon it hardens under sprays of water then goes into a machine that chips it into flakes it's Blended and melted and then it's pumped to the spinnerets just now this man is putting a nylon spinnerette into place and here out it comes the hot molten nylon out through the tiny holes to form These Fine filament these filaments Harden in a current of warm air and down here they are gathered into a single fiber this fiber is drawn onto a machine on the floor below this machine twists it into a single strand of nylon yarn the strands are wound on large bobbens and here's a full bobin of bright silky nylon yarn but now before this can be made into cloth it has to be stretched see how we can stretch it this stretching gives it strength and true elasticity now a lot of this nylon yarn is used for stockings you know stockings are made on the knitting machines in a hosery mill this machine knits a number of stockings at a time the machine has rows of needles there he's straightening one of the needles now now the machine is knitting again see how the nylon threads move in and out and back and forth among the needles the machine knits a stocking in a broad flat strip to make a finished stocking these strips have to be sewn up and that's just what this sews the sides of strip together now it looks like a stocking the stockings are done they are put on forms and heated for a time this sets them in the proper shape at last they come off the forms as finished stockings now they're ready to be worn stockings of a fine silky cloth made by the science of chemistry from a lump of [Music] coal so you see Johnny we do make cloth from coal at that yes but I still don't know just why those chemicals work like that yes why does the liquid get hard when it comes all the spinner L boys boys there a lot of things I haven't told you but let's leave those till we explore our chemistry further this is a science which gives us so many things we use every day of Our [Music] Lives