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For Researchers See how we measure our impacts. For Educators Use our conservation curricula in your classroom. Subscribe Sign up for business updates or general updates. A polymer is a chemical compound with large molecules made of many smaller molecules of the same kind. Some polymers exist naturally and others are produced in laboratories and factories.
Natural rubber is one of the most important polymers for human society. Natural rubber is an essential raw material used in the creation of more than 40, products. It is used in medical devices, surgical gloves, aircraft and car tires, pacifiers, clothes, toys, etc.
Natural rubber is obtained from latex , a milky liquid present in either the latex vessels ducts or in the cells of rubber-producing plants. Around 20, species of plants produce latex, but only 2, species have been found to contain rubber in their latex. The biological function of rubber for the plants is not fully known.
However, it has been shown that rubber can help plants to heal after they are damaged, by covering wounds and stopping the bleeding. This blocks the entry of harmful bacteria and viruses into the plants. The properties of rubber include high strength and the capability to be stretched many times without breaking. Natural rubber compounds are exceptionally flexible, good electrical insulators, and are resistant to many corrosive substances [ 1 ]. Synthetic man-made rubber can be produced through a chemical process, but people have not been able to produce a synthetic rubber that has all the properties of natural rubber.
So, natural rubber cannot be replaced by synthetic rubber in most of its applications. This is why natural rubber is still very important to human society [ 2 ]. As far back as B. It was not until the conquest of America that the use of rubber reached the western World.
Christopher Columbus was responsible for finding rubber in the early s. Natives from Haiti played football with a ball made of rubber, and later, in , Fray Juan de Torquemada wrote about indigenous and Spanish settlers of South America wearing shoes, clothing and hats made by dipping cloth into latex, making these items stronger and waterproof.
But rubber had some problems: it became sticky in response to warm weather and it hardened and cracked with cold weather. There, he found two different trees containing latex: Hevea brasiliensis Figure 1B and Castilla elastica [ 3 ], but only the first became important as a natural rubber source.
The reason why the Hevea tree succeeded over the Castilla tree was the way its latex was transported along the trunk. The Hevea tree has connected latex tubes Figure 1A that form a network, whereas the Castilla tree does not form a connected system. Thanks to its connected system, the Hevea tree bleeds latex when a special incision is made in its trunk Figure 2. Without the latex tube connections, the Castilla tree does not bleed latex, making harvest of rubber more difficult.
In , Charles Goodyear invented the vulcanization process, solving many of the problems associated with rubber. Heat Based Machinery. Rotation Based Machinery. Fuel Rod Empty. TFBP - Compression. CF Pellet. Category : Experimental. Hidden category: Dirty Pages.
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