Technology Project

1. By: Heath Bridges

2.  Rubber’s elastic property
comes from its chemical
makeup. Rubber is a
polymer, a chain of
repeating units called
monomers (Freudenrich
1).

3.  The monomer in rubber is
called isoprene and has
two carbon-carbon double
bonds (1).

4.  The fluid which comes from latex trees contains large
numbers of isoprene molecules and as the latex dries, the
isoprene molecules crowd together (1). The isoprene
molecules then attack carbon-carbon double bonds of
neighboring molecules causing the double bonds to break
(1). The electrons then rearrange to form a bond between the
two isoprene molecules (1).

5.  The process continues until long strands of many isoprene
molecules are linked like a chain (Freudenrich 1). These
strands are called polyisoprene polymer with each
polyisoprene molecule containing thousands of isoprene
monomers (1).

6.  As the drying process continues electrostatic bonds form
between the polyisoprene strands (1). The electrostatic
attraction between strands holds the rubber fibers together
and gives them their “stretchy” property (1).

7.  Temperature affects the electrostatic interactions between the
polyisoprene strands in latex rubber (1). Hot temperatures
reduce the interactions and cause the rubber to have a stickier
texture (1). Colder temperatures increase the interactions and
cause the rubber to become brittle (1).

8.  Freudenrich, Ph.D., Craig. "How Rubber Works" 14 October 2008.
HowStuffWorks.com.
<http://science.howstuffworks.com/rubber.htm> 11
April 2013.http://www.howstuffworks.com/rubber.htm
 Schaefer, Ronald J. "Dynamic properties of rubber." Rubber World May
1994: 20+.
General OneFile. Web. 11 Apr. 2013.Document
URL
<http://go.galegroup.com/ps/
i.do?id=GALE%7CA15410472&v=2.1&u=tel_k_dlhs&it=r&p=GPS&s
w=w>http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-15410472.html
 The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012,
Columbia
University Press. All rights reserved.
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