Abstract
We describe a novel plastic material composed of camphene, camphor, and polypropylene that seems perfectly suited for studies on self-propelled objects on the water surface. Self-motion is one of the attributes of life, and chemically propelled objects show numerous similarities with animated motion. One of important questions is the relationship between the object shape and its motility. In our paper published in 2019, we presented a novel hybrid material, obtained from the solution of camphor in camphene, that allowed making objects of various shapes. This hybrid material has wax-like mechanical properties, but it has a very high tackiness. Here, we report that a small amount of polypropylene removed this undesirable feature. We investigated the properties of camphor–camphene–polypropylene plastic by performing the statistical analysis of a pill trajectory inside a Petri dish and compared them with those of camphor-camphene wax. The plastic showed the stable character of motion for over an hour-long experiment. The surface activity of objects made of plastic did not significantly depend on the weight ratios of the compounds. Such a significant increase in usefulness came from the polypropylene, which controlled the dissipation of camphor and camphene molecules.
Highlights
IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
We found that there are just a few substrates to which it does not stick, and these materials have to be used to manipulate objects made of the camphene–camphor wax
That the self-propelled motion of such pills qualitatively differs from that observed for camphene–camphor–polypropylene plastic
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Studies on the time evolution of objects, self-propelled on aqueous surfaces, attract significant scientific attention as an interesting example of systems in which the transformation of chemical energy to kinetic energy creates complex and even life-like behavior [1]. The motion of a camphor piece on the water surface is a classic and simple example of such energy conversions [2,3,4]. Camphor quickly dissipates as a result of sublimation, dissolution, and the formation of a surface layer
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