Latin Americanists and film aficionados might recognize the setting of Irma Voth and the film-within-the-novel from Silent Light (Stellet Licht), the 2007 Plattdeutsch-language film by Carlos Reygadas.
Wood-plastic composites (WPCs) are composite materials made of wood fiber / wood flour and thermoplastic(s) (includes PE, PP, PVC etc.). Chemical additives seem practically invisible (except mineral fillers and pigments, if added) in the composite structure.
Matrix materials are usually some type of plastic, and these composites are often called reinforced plastics. There are other types of matrices, such as metal or ceramic, but plastics are by far the most common.There are also many types of plastics, but a discussion of them is beyond the scope of this week's column. common example of a composite is concrete. It consists of a binder (cement) and a reinforcement (gravel). Adding another reinforcement (rebar) transforms concrete into a three-phase composite. The individual materials that make up composites are called constituents.