A Material Scientist's View of My Room

Ever wondered how paints are made?

Why do we use specific material for raincoats?

What is the difference in an analog or a digital clock?

Why do we like certain art forms more than others?

Look around your room and observe how many materials you can identify.

Almost everything is a polymer, a pigment, a dye, an alloy or a composite of some kind—the wall paint, the curtains or the mattress. These can be natural or synthetic; organic or inorganic; malleable or brittle; hard or soft.

Without the materials (mostly polymers), humanity cannot survive. Even God has his way of telling us this—cellulose in plants is the most abundant natural polymer.

I took a panoramic view of my room and tried to decipher each material. I researched about their sources, history, manufacturing processes and other interesting facts.

I wanted to make it fun and interactive, so chose the HTML image map functionality coupled with click to popup JavaScript.

Hover over each of the highlighted areas in subsequent images to know more about major polymers, pigments, composites, metals or alloys used in making the material in our living space.

Follow these steps -

1. Click on the first image anywhere.

2. It leads to another image with certain materials grouped and highlighted.

3. Hover over the highlighted regions to know what each corresponds to.

4. Click on it to invoke a popup to know more.

5. Click on non-highlighted region to proceed to the next material group.

6. Repeat steps 2 to 5.

Figure 1. An interactive panoramic view of my room. Click the image to begin...