Silicone Season

A curious new chemical last week achieved something of a vogue as a social toy in Manhattan. Gadget-loving hosts introduced it at family gatherings; the Manhattan press ran feature stories; the New Yorker took notice. This entertaining material is a kind of putty which can be pulled and kneaded like taffy but has a surprising, unputty-like property--when rolled into a ball and dropped on a hard surface, it bounces.

General Electric displayed it in little cans labeled "Bouncing Putty." What use, if any, this curiosity may have, chemists are not yet prepared to say. But bouncing putty is one of a new class of chemical materials, called silicones, which chemists ecstatically predict have as great a postwar future as radar.

Plastic Wedding. The silicones are a new type of plastic--an unusual wedding of organic and inorganic chemistry. Organic plastics have poor resistance to heat and cold; at extreme temperatures they become brittle or soft. This fault is overcome in the silicones by replacing the carbon atoms in organic compounds with a much tougher combination of silicon (basic ingredient of sand) and oxygen. The result is a material combining the flexibility of plastics with great resistance to heat, water and air. Some silicones can withstand temperatures from 60 below zero Fahrenheit to 575 above.

The silicones are so new that most of their uses are still a military secret. Chief credit for their discovery is given to a British chemist named F. S. Kipping, who developed the first practical formula for making them in 1904. Kipping saw little use for silicones. But researchers of the Corning Glass Works and General Electric, picking up where Kipping left off, have recently developed silicones in a variety of forms (liquid and solid) for a variety of purposes.

Last fortnight General Electric announced the newest--silicone rubber (of which bouncing putty is one form). Because of its great resistance to heat, silicone rubber is better than natural rubber for many purposes. The Army is using it for gaskets on turbosuperchargers, the Navy for shock absorbers for the glass lenses in searchlights--both uses for which no previous material had filled the bill.

Wonders to Come. As liquid or vapor, silicones are sprayed on all sorts of materials to make them waterproof; they form a thin, invisible film which does not change the feel of the material. As oil or grease, they make ideal lubricants. As plastics, they are extremely tough. Some silicone wonders promised by engineers:

P: Dishes which will need only rinsing, no wiping, because water will not stick to them.

P: Water-shedding suits and dresses whose creases will not be affected by rain.

P: Paper raincoats.

P: Waterproof shoes.

P: Lacquers and paints, impervious to sun, heat and acids, which will last indefinitely.

P: Windshields from which water and snow will roll like water off a duck's back.

P: A coating which will make metals rustproof.

P: Waterproof brick and mortar.

P: Stainproof upholstery.

P: Light, durable electrical insulation, which will cut the weight of electric motors by two thirds, give them a potential life of 400 years.

P: Oil and grease which will not thicken in any weather.

P: Hardy garden hose which can be left outdoors winter and summer.

Although silicone rubber at present has not enough tensile strength for tires, engineers are confident that eventually they will correct this shortcoming, develop silicone tires that will outlast a car.

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