Hello, I'm rubber

Autumn.. leaves are falling.. Oh.. hi! This website, as you may have seen, is about rubber. We use innertubes to make sexy clothing from. But what is rubber? Where does it come from? Is it Made in HongKong? Heh. Or does it grow somewhere? Nah. Obviously we wanted to know ourselves, so we did some research and made notes. Well put your glasses on. Here's a short illustrated explanation.

A polymer

Natural rubber is in fact a polymer. A polymer is a large molecule, containing thousands of small molecules joined together to form one giant macromolecule. This polymer is called polyisoprene. At the left is a picture of it's chemical structure. Little units like that are joined together and form a long chain of thousands of them. Polymer molecules are shaped like long chains.
Rubber can be made synthetically by polymerisation of a small isoprene molecule. See, one paragraph down, the structure of isoprene at the left. If you came here from a link in our gallery, you can see wonderful similarities between this structure and, for instance, the technique used to create this stunning 'Molecular Affair' chaps.

Crack

When latex rubber comes from the tree (the rubbertree; Hevea Brasiliensis, Thailand, Indonesia), there's actually not much use for it. Things made of natural rubber can only be used in warm climates since it will crack at lower temperatures. It can only be used for pencil erasers. That is where the word rubber comes from (1536). Rub her. Well you could have thought of that yourself.

Christa's Law

Can we stretch out a piece of wood? Does a piece of rock bounce like a tennisball?
No.
So, what makes rubber stretchy? What makes rubber rubber? Why is it stretchable? Well, that is because of Christa's Law.
LOL, no.. it is caused by entropy. In short, entropy is, sort of, the degree of chaos in a system. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that a system will move from a state of order to a state of disorder. Let's say, a sort of natural lazyness... Also, this law is related to the nature of heat. Wait and see.

Chaos

So when the rubber is sleeping on the couch, it's molecules, shaped like long chains, are just tangled up in chaos. But when we wake it up, so to speak, and stretch it, the chains of molecules become aligned in one direction. From a state of chaos, suddenly there is order. But as soon as we let it go, the rubber wants it's chaos, it's disorder, it's mess again. And that is what's happening. It snaps back. Chaos is a strong thing.

Warmth

When those chains of molecules align in order they are called crystals. When molecules form crystals, they give off heat. So when you stretch a rubber band, it feels hot. When you let it go again, it cools down. Crystals? Christa? Where are we getting at?
And you were thinking rubber is just rubber...

Accident

In the winter of 1839 Charles Goodyear was trying to find a way to make natural rubber more useful. Until then, for about 300 years, almost only pencil erasers were made of it.
One day, he mixed some rubber and sulfur but accidentally spilled it on a hot stovetop. When it was fried and cooled down, he discovered the sulfur was the one ingredient needed to make natural rubber stable in low and high temperatures. This process is now known as vulcanization.

Crosslinking

What Goodyear had done, is called crosslinking. Sulfur molecules contain sulfur atoms. When these sulfur molecules are heated, together with the natural rubber's polyisoprene molecules, a strange thing happens. The sulfur atoms fall apart and join the polyisoprene chains.
Now, polyisoprene molecules are already huge molecules, but because of the crosslinking with the sulfur atoms they have all joined into one giant molecule.
Meaning: there is only one molecule in a piece of crosslinked rubber.
And you were thinking rubber is just rubber...

Waste

Crosslinking makes rubber stronger and allows it to keep it's shape better. Goodyear's accident changed the world. But at the same time a problem was born. You see, the gazillions of tires for our cars, motorbikes, mopeds and bicycles all over the world are all made of crosslinked rubber.
And crosslinked rubber is very difficult to recycle. Because, after rubber has been crosslinked, it won't flow when it is heated. That's not only a big problem, it's also an incredible lot of waste.

Recycling

And that's where we come in. Krijnie and Christa from the Netherlands. We don't like the smell of burning tyres. We recycle crosslinked rubber.
We just follow nature's ways. Since the beginning of the Universe, some 15 billion years ago, there was never any waste. How can there be waste in a perfect system? Look at our oceans, our trees, animal life; nothing is wasted.

"...the oxygen you breathe, the calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood: all these elements were synthesized in the fiery centers of the stars, cast out into space, and recycled as material for our own Sun and Earth and all its life." (The Cosmic Voyage)

And you were thinking rubber is just rubber. Nay.

Much thanks goes out to Dr. Mark Michalovic, Ph.D.
and Gregory J Brustthe, Ph.D.
from the School of Polymers and High Performance Materials
of The University of Southern Mississippi
for their wonderful explanation.