How is Kevlar made?
There are two main stages involved in making Kevlar. First you have to produce the basic plastic from which Kevlar is made (a chemical called poly-para-phenylene terephthalamide—no wonder they call it Kevlar). Second, you have to turn it into strong fibers. So the first step is all about chemistry; the second one is about turning your chemical product into a more useful, practical material. Polyamides like Kevlar are polymers (huge molecules made of many identical parts joined together in long chains) made by repeating amides over and over again. Amides are simply chemical compounds in which part of an organic (carbon-based) acid replaces one of the hydrogen atoms in ammonia (NH3). So the basic way of making a polyamide is to take an ammonia-like chemical and react it with an organic acid. This is an example of what chemists call a condensation reaction because two substances fuse together into one. Kevlar’s monomer: C=carbon, H=hydrogen, O=oyxgen, N=nitrogen, — is a single chemical bo