Part 2/11:
The quest for a safer alternative led the chemical company DuPont to explore new refrigeration technologies in the 1930s. Chemist Roy J. Plunkett, during one of his experiments in 1936, discovered a substance while trying to find a safer refrigerant. Upon attempting to use tetrafluoroethylene (TFE), he opened a cylinder expecting gas but found a white, slippery powder instead. TFE had polymerized into polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a remarkable, nearly indestructible material due to the strong carbon-fluorine bonds it possessed. This unforeseen accident would soon lead to the conception of Teflon.