I Can’t Sleep - Paper | Relaxing Bedtime Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: January 18, 2020

Relax with calm bedtime reading about paper to ease insomnia and help restless nights fade away. This gentle episode explores the long history of paper, from its invention in ancient China to its vital role in communication, art, and daily life. Benjamin’s soothing cadence turns a simple material into a peaceful journey of discovery. With no whispering or hypnosis—just calm, fact-filled storytelling—you’ll find your mind unwinding while learning something new. Press play, let go of stress, and drift into restful sleep. Want More? Request a Topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Ad-Free Episodes: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop Sleep-Friendly Products: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Join the Discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/myhGhVUhn7 This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Paper, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Paper. Happy sleeping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch. I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause.

With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled Paper. Paper is a thin material produced by pressing together moist fibers of cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags, or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets. It is a versatile material with many uses, including writing, painting, packaging, cleaning, decorating, and a number of industrial and construction processes.

papers are essential in legal or non-legal documentation. The pulp paper-making process developed in China during the early second century CE, possibly as early as the year 105 CE, by the Han Court Unique Sailun, although the earliest archaeological fragments of paper derived from the second century BCE in China. The modern pulp and paper industry is global, with China leading its production, and the United States right behind it.

The oldest known archaeological fragments of the immediate precursor to modern paper date to the second century BCE in China. The pulp paper-making process is ascribed to Siloon, a second-century CE-Hon-Cored eunuch. In the 13th century, the knowledge and uses of paper spread from China through the Middle East to medieval Europe, where the first water-powered paper mills were built. Because paper was introduced to the west through the city of Baghdad,

it was first called Baghdadikos. In the 19th century, industrialization greatly reduced the cost of manufacturing paper. In 1844, the Canadian inventor Charles Fenerty and the German F.G. Keller, independently developed processes for pulping wood fibers. Early sources of fiber. Before the industrialization of paper production, the most common fiber source was recycled fibers from used textiles called rags. The rags were from hemp, linen, and cotton.

A process for removing printing inks from recycled paper was invented by German jurist Eustace Klophruth in 17. Today this method is called de-inking. It was not until the introduction of wood pulp in 1843, the paper production was not dependent on recycled materials from rag pickers. Etymology. The word paper is etymologically derived from Latin papyrus, which comes from the Greek, papurus, the word for the Cyprus papyrus plant.

Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced. from the pith of the Cyprus papyrus plant, which is used in ancient Egypt and other Mediterranean cultures for writing before the introduction of paper into the Middle East and Europe. Although the word paper is etymologically derived from papyrus, the two are produced very differently, and the development of the first is distinct from the development of the second. Papyrus is a lamination of natural plant fibers,

while paper is manufactured from fibers whose properties have been changed by maceration. Paper making Chemical Pulping To make pulp from wood, a chemical pulping process separates lignin from cellulose fibers. This is accomplished by dissolving lignin in a cooking liquor, so that it may be washed from the cellulose. This preserves the length of the cellulose fibers. Paper made from chemical pulps are also used. known as wood-free papers, not to be confused with tree-free paper.

This is because they do not contain lignin, which deteriorates over time. The pulp can also be bleached to produce white paper, but this consumes 5% of the fibers. Chemical pulping processes are not used to make paper made from cotton, which is already 90% cellulose. There are three main chemical pulping processes. The sulfite process dates back to the 1840s, and it was the dominant method extent before this Second World War. The craft process invented in the 1870s and first used in the 1890s is now the most commonly practiced strategy. One of its advantages is the chemical reaction with lignin that produces heat, which can be used to run a generator.

Most pulping operations using the craft process are net contributors to the electricity grid or use the electricity to run an adjacent paper mill. Another advantage is that this process recovers and reuses all inorganic chemical reagents. Soda pulping is another specialty process used to pulp straws, bagasse, and hardwoods with high silicate content. mechanical pulping. There are two major mechanical pulps. Thermomechanical pulp, TMP, and groundwood pulp, GW. In the TMP process, wood is chipped and then fed into steam-heated refiners,

where the chips are squeezed and converted to fibers between two steel discs. In the groundwood process, debarked logs are fed into grinders where they are pressed together. rotating stones to be made into fibers. Mechanical pulping does not remove the lignin, so the yield is very high, greater than 95%. However, it causes the paper thus produced to turn yellow and become brittle over time. Mechanical pulps have rather short fibers,

thus producing weak paper. Although large amounts of electrical energy are required to produce mechanical pulp, it costs less than the chemical kind. De-inked pulp. Paper recycling processes can use either chemically or mechanically produced pulp. By mixing it with water and applying mechanical action, the hydrogen bonds and the paper can be broken and fibers separated again.

Most recycled paper contains a proportion of virgin fiber for the sake of quality. Generally speaking, de-inked pulp is a, of the same quality or lower than the collected paper was made from. There are three main classifications of recycled fiber. Mill broke or internal mill waste. This incorporates any substandard or grade-change paper made within the paper mill itself, which then goes back into the manufacturing system to be repulped back into paper. Such out-of-specification paper is not sold,

and is therefore often not classified as genuine reclaimed recycled fiber. However, most paper mills have been reusing their own waste fiber for many years, long before recycling became popular. Pre-consumer waste. This is off-cut and processing waste, such as guillotine trims and envelope blank waste. It is generated outside the paper mill and could potentially go to landfill. and is a genuine recycled fiber source.

It includes de-ink pre-consumer, recycled material that has been printed but did not reach its intended end use, such as waste from printers and unsold publications. Post-consumer waste. This fiber from paper that has been used for its intended end use and includes office waste, magazine papers, and newsprint.

As the vast majority of this material has been printed, either digitally or by more conventional means such as lithography or rhodo-reviewer. It will either be recycled as printed paper or go through a de-inking process first. Recycled papers can be made from 100% recycled materials or blended with virgin pulp, although they are generally not as strong nor as bright as papers made from the latter. Additives Besides the fibers, pulps may contain fillers such as chalk and china clay, which improve its characteristics for printing or writing.

Additives for sizing purposes may be mixed with it or applied to the paper web later in the manufacturing process. The purpose of such sizing is to establish the correct level of surface absorbency to suit ink or paint. Producing paper. The pulp is fed to a paper machine where it is formed as a paper web, and the water is removed from it by pressing and drying. Pressing the sheet removes the water by force. Once the water is forced from the sheet, a special kind of felt, which is not to be confused with the traditional one, is used to collect the water. Whereas when making paper by hand, a blotter sheet is used instead. Drying involves using air or heat to remove water from the paper sheets.

In the earliest days of paper making, this was done by hanging the sheets like laundry. In more modern times, various forms of heated drying mechanisms are used. On the paper machine, the most common is the steam-heated can dryer. These can reach temperatures above 200 degrees Fahrenheit, 93 degrees Celsius, and are used in long sequences of more than 40 cans, where the heat produced by these can easily dry the paper to less than 6% moisture. Finishing. The paper may then undergo.

sizing to alter its physical properties for use in various applications. Paper at this point is uncoded. Coated paper has a thin layer of materials such as calcium carbonate or china clay applied to one or both sides in order to create a surface more suitable for high-resolution halftone screens. Uncoded papers are rarely suitable for screens above 150 LPI. Coded or uncoded papers may have their service. is polished by calendaring. Coated papers are divided into mat,

semi-mat, or silk, and gloss. Clause papers give the highest optical density in the printed image. The paper is then fed onto reels if it is to be used on web printing presses, or cut into sheets for other printing processes or other

purposes. The fibers in the paper basically run in the machine direction. Sheets are usually cut long i.e. with the grain parallel to the longer dimension of the sheed. Continuous form paper, or continuous stationary, is cut to width with holes punched at the edges and folded into stacks. Paper grain. All paper produced by paper machines, as the forgernear machine, are woven paper, i.e. the wire mesh that transports the web leaves a pattern that

has the same density along the paper grain and across the grain. Textured finishes, watermarks, and wire patterns, imitating handmade, laid paper, can be created by the use of appropriate rollers in the later stages of the machine. Wove paper does not exhibit laid lines, which are small regular lines left behind on paper when it was handmade in a mold made from rows of metal wires or bamboo. Laid lines are very close together.

They run perpendicular to the chain lines, which are further apart. Handmade paper similarly exhibits decal edges or rough and feathery borders. Applications Paper can be produced with a wide variety of properties, depending on its intended use, for representing value, paper money, banknote, check, security, voucher, and ticket. For storing information, book, notebook, graph paper, punched card, photographic paper. For personal use, diary, note to remind oneself, etc. For temporary personal use, scratch paper.

For communication between individuals and or groups of people, magazine, newspaper, art, design, letter, newsprint, cardstock. for packaging Corrigated box Paper bag envelope wrapping paper paper string

charter and paratica and wallpaper For cleaning toilet paper Anchorchiefs paper towels facial tissue and cat litter

For construction paper machet or agamie paper paper planes Quilling Paper honey comb used as a core material and composite materials, paper engineering, construction paper, and paper clothing. For other uses, emery paper, sandpaper, blotting paper, litmus paper, universal indicator paper, paper chromatography, electrical insulation paper, see also fish

paper, dielectric and permittivity, and filter paper. It is estimated that paper-based storage solutions captured 0.33% of the total in 1986 and only 0.007% in 2007, even though in absolute terms, the world's capacity to store information on paper increased from 8.7 to 19.4 petabytes. It is estimated that in 1986, paper-based postal letters represented less than 0.05% of the world's telecommunication capacity, with sharply decreased. tendency after the massive introduction of digital technologies. Paper has a major role in the visual arts. It is used by itself to form two and three-dimensional shapes and collages.

It has also evolved to being a structural material used in furniture design. Watercolor paper has a long history of production and use. Types, thickness, and weight. The thickness of paper is often measured by caliper, which is typically given in thousands of an inch in the United States and in micrometers in the rest of the world. Paper may be between 0.07 and 0.18 millimeters thick. Paper is often characterized by weight. In the United States, the weight assigned to a paper is the weight of a ream, 500 sheets, of varying basic sizes,

before the paper is cut into the size it is sold to end customers. For example, a ream of 20-pound 8.5 by 11-inch paper weighs 5 pounds, because it has been cut from a larger sheet into four pieces. In the United States, printing paper is generally 20, pound, 24 pound, or 32 pound at most. Cover stock is generally 68 pound, and 110 pound or more is considered card stock. In Europe and other regions, using the ISO-216 paper sizing system, the weight is expressed in grams per square meter of the paper. Printing paper is generally between 60 grams and 120 grams. Anything heavier than 160 grams is considered card.

The weight of a ream, therefore, depends on the dimensions of the paper and its thickness. Most commercial papers sold in North America is cut to a standard paper sizes based on customary units and is defined by the length and width of a sheet of paper. The ISO-216 system used in most other countries is based on the surface area of a sheet of paper, not on a sheet's width and length. It was first adopted in Germany in 1922 and generally spread as nations adopted the metric system. The largest standard size paper is A-0, measuring one square meter. A1 is half the size of a sheet of A0, such that two sheets of A1 placed side by side are equal to one sheet of A0. A2 is half the size of a sheet of A1, and so forth.

Common sizes used in the office and the home are A4 and A3. A3 is a size of two A4 sheets. The density of paper ranges from 250 kilograms per meter cubed for tissue paper to 50. 500 kilograms per meter cubed for some specialty paper. Printing paper is about 800 kilograms per meter cubed. Paper may be classified into seven categories. Printing papers of wide variety. Rapping papers for the protection of goods and merchandise.

This includes wax and craft papers. Writing paper suitable for stationary requirements. This includes ledger, bank, and bond paper. Blotting papers containing little or no size. drying papers usually with rough surfaces used by artists and designers including cartridge paper handmade papers including most decorative papers ingress papers japanese paper and tissues all characterized by lack of grain direction specialty paper including cigarette paper toilet tissue and other industrial papers some paper types include bank paper banana paper bond paper book paper

coated paper glossy and matte surface construction paper sugar paper cotton paper fish paper vulcanized fibers for electrical insulation inkjet paper craft paper laid paper leather paper mummy paper oak tag paper sandpaper tivac paper wallpaper wallpaper tivac paper wall paper washy waterproof paper wax paper wove paper wax paper wove paper wove paper wove paper paper, juan paper, paper stability. Much of the early paper made from wood pulp contained significant amounts of alum, a variety of aluminum sulfate salts that is significantly acidic. Alam was added to paper to assist in sizing, making it somewhat water-resistant so that inks did not run or spread uncontrollably. Early paper makers did not realize that the alum they added liberally to cure almost every problem encountered in making their product is eventually detrimental. The cellulose fibers that make up paper are hydrolyzed by acid, and the presence of alum eventually degrades the fibers until the paper disintegrates in a process known as slow fire.

Documents written on rag paper are significantly more stable. The use of non-acidic additives to make paper is becoming more prevalent, and the stability of these papers is less of an issue. Paper made from mechanical pulp contains significant amounts of lignin, a major component in wood. In the presence of light and oxygen, lignin reacts to give yellow materials, which is why newsprint and other mechanical paper yellows with age. Paper made from bleached craft or sulfide pulps does not contain significant amounts of lignin and is therefore better suited for books, documents, and other applications where white

of the paper is essential. Paper made from wood pulp is not necessarily less durable than a rag paper. The aging behavior of paper is determined by its manufacture, not the original source of the fibers. Furthermore, tests sponsored by the Library of Congress prove that all paper is at risk of acid decay, because cellulose itself produces formic, acidic, lactic, and oxalic acids. mechanical pulping yields almost a ton of pulp per ton of drywood use, which is why mechanical pulps are sometimes referred to as high-yield pulps. With almost twice the yield as chemical pulping, mechanical pulps is often cheaper.

Mass market paperback books and newspapers tend to use mechanical papers. Book publishers tend to use acid-free paper, made from fully bleached chemical pulps for hardback and trade paperback books. Environmental impact The production and use of paper has a number of adverse effects on the environment. Worldwide consumption of paper is risen by 400% in the past 40 years, leading to increase in deforestation, with 35% of harvested trees being used for paper manufacture.

Most paper companies also plant trees to help regrow forests. Logging of old growth forests accounts for less than 10% of wood pulp, but is one of the most controversial issues. Paper waste accounts for up to 40% of total waste produced in the United States each year, which adds up to 71.6 million tons of paper wasted per year in the United States alone. The average office worker in the U.S. prints 31 pages every day. Americans also use in the order of 16 billion paper cups per year. Conventional bleaching of wood pulp using elemental chlorine produces and releases into the environment

large amounts of chlorinated organic compounds, including chlorinated dioxins. Dioxins are recognized as a persistent environmental pollutant. regulated internationally by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Dioxins are highly toxic, and health effects on humans include reproductive, developmental, immune, and hormonal problems. They are known to be carcinogenic. Over 90% of human exposure is through food, primarily meat, dairy, fish, and shellfish, as dioxins accumulate in the food chain and the fatty tissues of animals. future. Some manufacturers have started using a new significantly more environmentally friendly alternative to expanded plastic packaging. Made out of paper and known commercially as paper foam,

the new packaging has mechanical properties very similar to those of some expanded plastic packaging, but is biodegradable and can also be recycled with ordinary paper. With increasing environmental concerns about synthetic coatings such as PFOA and the higher prices of hydrocarbon-based petrochemicals, there is a focus on zinc, corn protein, as a coating for paper in high-grease applications such as popcorn bags. Also, synthetics such as Tivik and Tesslin have been introduced as printing media as a more durable material than paper.