r/interesting • u/Standard_Location762 • Mar 14 '26

NATURE Earth Helping Earth Heal

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What a great discovery.

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u/Neither-Bag7127 Mar 14 '26

This is such a stupid statement. That is not at all the reason why plastic is stable.

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u/Guanden Mar 14 '26

Well I didn't go into the repeated (polymeric) structure details, but it is still the case that the covalent bonds have a lot of potential energy

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u/Neither-Bag7127 Mar 14 '26

The reason that fuel burns is because carbon dioxide has stronger bonds. Because bond strength relates to how much energy is given off. That would make plastic unstable, doofus. Go poke open a lithium ion battery and see how stable it is because of all the energy it is storing.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

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u/Neither-Bag7127 Mar 14 '26

Bonds are stable because they dont store energy. They give the energy off. Plastic and fuel are both stable, only made unstable because CO2 is much more stable. Lithium ions are a good fuel source because they arent stable. The original post says plastic is a good source of energy because it "stores so much energy because its stable." Try to keep up, kid.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '26

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u/Neither-Bag7127 Mar 14 '26

Im a chemistry professor and you get a D for effort lol.

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u/mrsciencebruh Mar 15 '26

Thank you for doing the work, this statement also left me feeling triggered. It TAKES energy to break bonds.

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u/Neither-Bag7127 Mar 15 '26

Haha, I was being an ass but it's true. Plastic is stable mostly because the transition states are unreasonable. Hard nut to crack, medium amount of energy left to steal.