This week's is much more complicated. Detailed answers, huh?
I’m guessing that this picture is of a piece of art, like a sculpture outside of the buildings you visited. It appears to be four different materials. The materials are as follows, rope, cloth, stone and plastic.
Rope is a length of fibers, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength (i.e., it can be used for pulling, not pushing). Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly constructed cord, line, string, or twine. (Wikipedia, 2008)
Making rope is a skill that has been around for thousands of years. Once people got past vines and other natural materials for binding up things, they discovered that fibers could be combined and twisted into great lengths by taking advantage of the tendency of materials to remember their natural condition. An example of a laid rope of three strands is a right hand lay which is the most often encountered form of laid rope. Laid ropes with the opposite twist pattern are said to be left hand laid. The lay of a rope is determined by examining the twist. If you look down the length of a rope and the primary strands spiral in a clockwise direction, it is right hand laid.
Plastic is the general common term for a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic organic solid materials suitable for the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular weight, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce costs.
The word derives from the Greek πλαστικός (plastikos), “fit for molding”, from πλαστός (plastos) “molded” [1] [2]. It refers to their malleability, or plasticity during manufacture, that allows them to be cast, pressed, or extruded into an enormous variety of shapes—such as films, fibers, plates, tubes, bottles, boxes, and much more.
This stone used in this piece of art is obviously coade stone. Coade stone was a ceramic material that has been described as an artificial stone. It was first created by Mrs Eleanor Coade (Elinor Coade, 1733-1821), and sold commercially from 1769 to 1833. The building boom in London, at this time, led to a high demand for ornate features to decorate and adorn brick-built Georgian houses. The showrooms of Mrs Coade’s Artificial Stone Company, in Westminster Bridge Road, provided a huge array of ‘off the shelf’ solutions for builders and architects, ranging from small keystones for over front doors to corner and window features and almost entire façades. (Wikipedia, 2008)
The common word “plastic” should not be confused with the technical adjective “plastic”, which is applied to any material which undergoes a permanent change of shape (a “plastic deformation”) when strained beyond a certain point. Aluminum, for instance, is “plastic” in this sense, but not “a plastic” in the common sense; while some plastics, in their finished forms, will break before deforming — and therefore are not “plastic” in the technical sense. (Wikipedia, 2008)
The cloth used in this piece of artwork is obviously a textile which can be defined as the following:
A textile is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw wool fibres, linen, cotton, or other material on a spinning wheel to produce long strands known as yarn.[1] Textiles are formed by weaving, knitting, crocheting, knotting, or pressing fibres together (felt).The words fabric and cloth are used in textile assembly trades (such as tailoring and dressmaking) as synonyms for textile. However, there are subtle differences in these terms. Textile refers to any material made of interlacing fibres. Fabric refers to any material made through weaving, knitting, crocheting, or bonding. Cloth refers to a finished piece of fabric that can be used for a purpose such as covering a bed. (Wikipedia, 2008)