system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do we know plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose if it's been around significantly less time than that?
gpt
Lets say that you take 100 lbs of a certain type of plastic and place it in certain conditions of temperature, humidity, etc. for a period of a year. Every month you measure how much of it has been decomposed. From the measurements you can find out the rate of decomposition and estimate how long it takes to decompose completely.