Beginning of Essay
Polymers have been around longer than we have. In fact, polymers are as old as life itself, as all life on earth is based on three types of polymers, namely DNA, RNA, and proteins. But this report is about some of the earliest synthetic polymers, that is, polymers ....

Middle of Essay
.... started to make them in the second half of the nineteenth century, long before we really even knew what a polymer was. The very first came about when a scientist reacted cellulose, in the form of cotton, with nitric acid. The result was cellulose nitrate. Cellulose nitrate, also called gun cotton, turned out to be a powerful explosive. It soon replaced common gunpowder as the explosive charge in the ammunition for rifles and artillery. Cellulose nitrate was also used to make an early polymer containing composite material, safety glass. This was a sandwich made of a sheet of cellulose nitrate in between two layers of glass. The sheet of cellulose ....