Olive oil untangles plastic

[ABM Nazmul Islam]

Chefs often add olive oil to spaghetti. Now a study finds that olive oil and other vegetable oils can also help make one type of fiber — essentially plastic spaghetti — super-strong. Researchers stumbled onto using the oils on plastic while trying to develop a better type of wax for skis. And those oils can not only keep those fibers from getting tangled, but are also safer and better for the environment than the solvents normally used for this purpose. The new oil-treated fibers could find a use in products such as bulletproof fabrics or ropes that anchor offshore oil rigs.