A few weeks ago, I described carbon fibre and this article is about Kevlar – another material discovered via chemistry. It was back in 1965 that a chemist at Du Pont, Stephanie Kwolek, discovered the forerunner of Kevlar. She had mixed a batch of polymers and it was cloudy rather than clear and so she decided to test it further. The cloudy solution was spun into a very light … [Read more...]