Clothing: Fibers and Textiles

Animal Materials, con't. This can be done by a heavy blow to the head. Then, the animal must be skinned. Removing the hair is best done by tanning, a process done by soaking the skin in tannin, often made from rotted oak products or other fermented natural materials. After the hide is tanned, the skin is stretched and dried. Now the skin can be cut and stitched into clothing. Wool is the hair of sheep, and must be first removed by shearing the animal, and then carded and combed until it is free of erroneous materials. Then, the wool can by spun into yarn, which can be either knit or woven. Silk, the thread making up a silkworm's cocoon, must be removed by unraveling the cocoon into it's several threads. Then, the threads can be woven into silk fabric. Tannin is made from tannic acid, having the chemical formula of C76H52O46. Wool is an alpha keratin, also known as glycine, and is almost the same as what makes up human hair. The chemical formula for glycine is C2H5O2N. Synthetic Materials Materials do not have to be natural in origin in order to be functional. Through chemistry, the production of many artificial fibers has become possible. Polypeptide chains provide the basis for the production of synthetic fibers; these are long molecules that can be forced to arrange themselves in a parallel manner as to become a thread. To do this, one must link together and acid and an alcohol molecule to form an ester in such a way that the ester can continue to grow at either end. This chain of esters is called a polyester. Another synthetic is rayon, which is made from reconstituded wood pulp. Nylon, the first material to be created entirely from chemicals, is made from drawn out threads of polymer. Acrylic, made from a polymer is a long-lasting, degradation-resistant material often used for outdoor-wear. The shiny polymer plastic PVC, a fetish-wear staple, can be used to create fashionable clothing. To make any artificial material, one must first create the molecule. For a polyester, the acid and the molecule are first reacted at high temperature in a vacuum. The material created is drawn out into a ribbon and then cooled and cut into chips. The chips are dried and melted. From there, the polyester is extruded through a

spinneret and stretched thin to create threads. For nylon, adipic acid and hexamethylene diamine are reacted, and the resulting material is drawn out into strong, stretchy threads. For rayon, the wood pulp, or cellulose, is dissolved in a soda solution and then drawn out into a chemical bath which forms the fibers. Acrylic is formed by dissolving the polymer polyacrylonitrile in a solvent and then squirting the polymer through spinnerets so that the solvent evaporates in the air, leaving the polymer threads. The threads are then stretched. The chemical formula for Dacron, the most common polyester is O21CC6H4CO2C2H4, which is called poly(ethylene terephthalate). Nylon's chemical formula is CO(CH2)4CONH(CH2)6NH , which is poly(hexamehylene adipamide). Rayon is just processed cellulose, which has the chemical formula of CH3COO. Acrylic comes from the monomer acrylonitrilite, which is made into a polymer, polyacrylonitrile. Acrylonitrilite's chemical formula is C3H3N. PVC, or Poly(vinyl chloride) has the chemical formula of CHClCH2. Fig. 2: Creating Nylon Back - Home - Next