· Teflon was an accidental discovery while trying to create new freons for refrigeration by Du Pont

· Teflon's "father" was a man by the name of Roy Plunkett who sought to make the common refrigerant tetrafluorodichloroethane, instead with tetrafluoroethylene and hydrochloric acid

· On April 6th 1938 Roy and his assistant filled 100 pounds worth of TFE and placed in dry ice, hoping to react it with HCl, but the TFE polymerized and then ran tests on his mistake

· Roy came up with polytetrafluoroethylene as his end result (at the time nylon was the big thing at Du Pont)

· Roy's test came as PTFE as being mandible when heated, also very slippery, and resistant to electrical currents

· PTFE was also the most inert substance ever created by man at the time, and still is now

· PTFE was expensive to create and only had military uses at first, one main use was found to be transparent to radar and made into nose cones for proximity bombs during world war two

· In the 1950's it was called Teflon and it became cheap to manufacture, Du Pont continued research for commercial and practical uses

· At this time a man by the name Marc Gregoire applied Teflon to fishing line to make it less tangled, his wife gave him the idea to put on pans to make food not stick to them

· Teflon was applied to pans and the name Tefal was given to the cookware ( most successful cooking pan line)

(Properties)

· The most inert and slipperiest man made polymer is polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon)

· This is because fluorine is larger than hydrogen causing an almost shielding affect to carbon with its strong bond to carbon allowing not atoms to bond with the carbon

· Very resistant to temperature change, it ranges from melting point of 320 degrees Celsius to freezing point of -232 degrees Celsius

· Teflon also adheres to the basic principals of a polymer such as the larger it becomes the more it branches thus more malleable and easier to work with

· Basic molecule consists of 2 carbons double bonded and 4 fluorine's (2 around each carbon)

(Uses)

· Anything which needs to be slippery and non-stick

· Wire which is required not to rub and snap

· Examples of uses, artificial heart tubes and valves, fallopian tubes, frying pans, athletic socks and etcetera