Rubber

...a synthetic, addition polymer produced from isoprene (latex), a naturally occurring substance produced by a plant

Prehistoric Uses: used by olmes who later passed the latex tree on to the mayans who made a ball out of it.
 * A synthetic Polymer that comes from a natural polymer putting many monomers together to create a chain of polymers that creat rubber that is a industral substance that is flexable and water proof. Rubber is unique in that way and example of rubber is condoms the linkages between them creat the rubber to be flexable, CH2-CH3 to a C=C CH2-CH2_CH 3 C=C! Its drieved from latex sap and collected and be refined. Polyisopnere is the type of natural rubber but can also be synthetic transformed.It comes from a plant source bark of a tree.The specific synthetic rubber is elastomer and that just means its more elastic deffinitions than the natural rubber because of the deformation that accurs between natural and synthetic. The rubber that is unique also carrys that title because when rubber is stretched or stressed it is able to go back to natural formation with very little or not any damage. There are many types of rubbers like. Rubber can be bouncy and fun. Rubber has many uses and can be found in almost everything.

Current sources
Close to 21 million tons of rubber were produced in 2005 of which around 42% was natural. Since the bulk of the rubber produced is the synthetic variety which is derived from petroleum, the price of even natural rubber is determined to a very large extent by the prevailing global price of crude oil. Today Asia is the main source of natural rubber, accounting for around 94% of output in 2005. The three largest producing countries, Thailand, Indonesia (2.4m tons) and Malaysia, together account for around 72% of all natural rubber production. Natural rubber is not cultivated widely in its native continent of South America due to the existence of South American leaf blight, and other natural predators of the rubber tree.

Compared to vulcanized rubber, uncured rubber has relatively few uses. It is used for cements; for adhesive, insulating, and friction tapes; and for crepe rubber used in insulating blankets and footwear. Vulcanized rubber, on the other hand, has numerous applications. Resistance to abrasion makes softer kinds of rubber valuable for the treads of vehicle tires and conveyor belts, and makes hard rubber valuable for pump housings and piping used in the handling of abrasive sludge.



Introducing Rubber
In 1736, a French astronomer was sent by his government to Peru to measure an arc of the meridian, He brought home samples of the milky fluid and reported that the Indians used it for lighting. He wrote that it burned without a wick very brightly and that the indians made shoes from it which were waterproof. The Indians collected the gummy fluid from trees in pear-shaped bottles on the necks of which they fasten wooden tubes. Pressure on the bottle sends the liquid squirting out of the tube, so they resemble syringes. Their name for the fluid, he added, was cachuchu or caoutchouc. Thirty-four years later, an English writer wrote about a different use for the tree gum and a new name. A stationer accidentally discovered that it would __ [|erase pencil marks] __, And, as it came from the Indies and rubbed, of course it was renamed India rubber.