Swimming Pool Design Tips

Styrofoam is different from the typical “Styrofoam” that most Americans, Canadians, and the rest of the world are aware of. How is that? If you look closely, you will notice how careless the usage of the term is in most denominations. “Styrofoam” cups, “Styrofoam” plates, etc. has been used by many people not knowing the fact that the real definition of the term is different from what is commonly accepted. Styrofoam, in reality, is more of foam than a flat sheet of white, plastic-like material. Looking at most appliances, one can see what Styrofoam really is. Although the fake and the true Styrofoam is made of the same material, polystyrene, the two are still fundamentally different especially in terms of patents.

Styrofoam is a patented name, meaning that a company owns it. Dow Company has owned the name since more than half a century ago, back in 1941. During that year, Dow Company has researchers studying the properties and the potential flexible usage of polystyrene. It has amazing properties which prompted the company to immediately patent the method of its manufacture. Since then it is used in the war as an important element of a six-man life raft because of its unique buoyancy. Today, Styrofoam is also used as an important part of life vests to induce flotation to those who could potentially drown. The sister of Styrofoam which is commonly mistaken with its more popular relative is actually called as “expanded polystyrene”. Expanded polystyrene has a lesser scope of usage than the extruded polystyrene of Styro. Despite of this, it is still useful as a handier alternative to Styrofoam.

All in all, Styrofoam is the most popular example of reckless name usage. But the qualities it possesses is relatively a much improved version of the expanded polystyrene, hence the mixture and the confusion cannot be really blamed to anyone. But it is still highly imperative to make the proper distinctions between the two, similar, but ultimately different results of the polystyrene manufacturing process.