01 Why the most 'ordinary' materials carry extraordinary responsibility THE CASE FOR RIGOROUS TESTING Pick up any complex machine — a car, a jet engine, a medical infusion pump — and look past the metal casing. Somewhere inside, a polymer is doing something critical. It is sealing a fluid pathway. It is absorbing a vibration that would otherwise fracture a precision component. It is insulating a wire that, if it shorted, would cause catastrophic failure.The validation of suc