the.com/vulcanization
Rubber meets sulfur and heat, and suddenly it stops melting in your car trunk.
means A process that heats raw rubber with sulfur to cross-link its molecules, turning a soft, gummy substance into something strong, elastic, and resistant to heat and cold.
from Named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the forge, the word was coined in the 1840s around the time Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped a rubber-and-sulfur mixture on a hot stove and found it had hardened into something far more useful than the sticky mess he'd started with. The god of fire got the naming rights because fire — in the form of heat — was exactly what made the transformation happen.
- accidental discovery
- Goodyear found it after dropping rubber on a hot stove
- named after
- Vulcan, Roman god of fire, not actual volcanoes
- the fix
- sulfur bonds rubber molecules into a stretchy crosslinked network
- patent fight
- Goodyear died broke despite tires everywhere bearing his name