Crazes in glassy polymers

Click on the image to open a larger version. Copyright: Athene M Donald

“Crazes in glassy polymers can form via two different mechanisms: scission and disentanglement. Trying to understand which is the dominant mechanism led me to realise that the strain at which crazing would occur would be not only temperature dependent, but also depend on the molecular weight of the polymer. This dates from 1984.”

Athene Donald is chair of the Royal Society’s Education Committee. You can learn more about her work by watching her lecture on 'The mesoscopic world - from plastic bags to brain disease - structural similarities in physics'.