What exactly is cellulose?
well, i was researching this, and i found a very good answer to this question... except i cant rephrase it any better....
"The softer parts of the bodies of plants are made up mostly of cellulose. It is the cellulose which enables a plant to bend and have flexibility. Nearly all green plants manufacture cellulose for their own use. It is made up of the same chemical elements as is sugar, namely, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. These materials are found in air and water. The sugar which is formed in the leaves is dissolved in the sap of the plant and soaks all through the body of the plant. Most of it goes to those places in the plant where growth or repair is taking place and part of this sugar is changed into cellulose. The plant uses it to make the walls of new cells. Cellulose is one of those natural products that man cannot produce chemically in the laboratory. But, of course, he uses it in many ways. He can obtain cellulose from plants even after the plant is dead and all the moisture in the plant has evaporated."
(that was taken straight out of the site, btw.)
so thats cellulose.
Now, i'm sure im not the only person who has tested to see how paper deteriorates... so i searched for any other published experiments that might be related to mine and found something about the deterioration of different types of paper.
ok, this article is a little long... so i'll summarise it.
- Cellulose fibres deteriorate when exposed to acids and moisture. The acid and moisture causes the fibres to split into smaller fragments continuously. The breaking down of the fibres then produces more acids, and the process continues.
- The longer the cellulose strands, the more durable the paper. Therefore, the shorter the fibres, the easier it is to damage the paper.
- Paper with the shortest cellulose fibres are newspapers that are mechanically processed without chemicals.
- Paper with cotton in it is sure to last a lot longer than regular paper, as the cellulose fibres in cotton are much longer than those most likely to be found in the normal paper.
- Alkaline paper, however, will last as long as cotton paper, which is a very long time. The alkaline in the paper neutralises acids and also makes the paper look whiter.
- Recently, scienctists discovered that as cellulose fibres age, they release acids such as formic, acetic and lactic acid. This would in turn, speed up the process of paper deterioration.
with this in mind, i think the vinegar should deteriorate the paper the fastest, and in all liquids, the newspaper should be the first to disintegrate. :)
later.
