[HN Gopher] Plastic Archeology
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Plastic Archeology
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 38 points
Date : 2023-11-30 01:22 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scopeofwork.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scopeofwork.net)
| taubek wrote:
| Addition related to LEGO and plastics - Lego abandons effort to
| make bricks from recycled plastic bottles -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37673494
| flir wrote:
| Contemporary archaeology - it's a thing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_archaeology
|
| Most famously, Bristol Uni excavated their own van:
| https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2017/11/19/dismantl...
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Regarding contemporary archaeology, I was thinking
| archaeologists of the future may find things like USB disks,
| HDDs, but it sounds like both of those last < 10 years when
| unused even above the ground. CDs may be readable I guess.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| you will definitely get over 10 years out of most of them as
| long as theyre not rusting or something
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Are you sure, I'm trying to find some papers, but I've
| found things like -
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/12/most-
| hard...
|
| https://superuser.com/questions/1647730/what-is-the-shelf-
| li...
|
| Edit: This has an interesting table -
|
| https://web.ece.ucsb.edu/~parhami/pubs_folder/parh19f-ebdt-
| d...
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| i dunno, i still use several hard drives from 2006. and
| at least one usb drive.
|
| ssds with constant writing will probably wear out pretty
| uniformly, but i was only thinking of actual hard drives
|
| that said i have a hilarious 80gb intel ssd from nearly
| the same period that works fine because its basically
| unused.
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| As a chemist, I would guess that the guy tapping of the plastic
| on his teeth was a real assessment of the plastic. There are so
| many physical properties that are hard to describe, but still
| recognizable, and I do stuff like that all the time.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I once got some very very vintage Lego bricks which didn't
| survive the dishwasher! I wish I had thought twice about that
| because they were clearly pre-ABS.
| s1mon wrote:
| I've been designing injection molded plastic parts for various
| products for 30+ years. I'm not a materials scientist, but from
| what I've seen with plastics, there will be experts who will be
| able to date plastic archeology to a high degree of accuracy. The
| basic materials of things like polycarbonate or ABS may be fairly
| consistent, but the additives (plasticizers, lubricants,
| colorants, etc) seem to have a lot more change, specialization,
| and innovation over time. There's a constant push-pull of wanting
| the cheapest possible generic materials vs wanting performance,
| while the plastic companies need ways to differentiate their
| products to make it so that very specific grades get designed in.
| With the right technology (e.g. chromatography or mass
| spectrometry) the right industrial historians/chemists will be
| able to fingerprint plastic objects and date them.
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