The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: Elastics: Where God and Science Smooch

27:18Because in the early 1830s, Charles Goodyear basically became obsessed with cracking the rubber coat. He just knew it could be used to be made into something useful, right? Yeah. And he became so personally committed to it. All of his investors went away. He went into debtor's prison so regularly he referred to it as his hotel. Six of his 12 children didn't make it to adulthood. They were just that poor. Oh, man. They had to sell their dinnerware, so he made plates for them out of rubber. It was really, really rough. So the idea that he had this breakthrough was just enormously rewarding for him, right?

27:58Unfortunately, as he was shopping this stuff around, this vulcanization process or the vulcanized rubber, some of it fell into the hands of Thomas Hancock, and he reverse engineered it. Yeah, and what he basically discovered was if you slow-cooked latex with sulfur, it could basically transform rubber into a very durable material that was hardy under all kinds of temperature ranges. It would always snap back. Yep. Well, not always and forever, which we'll get to later, too. As you know, that waistband will sometimes leave you disappointed eventually. That's why you end up buying new underwear.

28:39well one of a couple of reasons you buy new underwear or take it to the thrift store yeah exactly but yeah he that is what vulcanization is and Hancock and McIntosh what they were doing they didn't crack that code first but they developed something called the masticator basically they had been making elastic threads by slicing it from rubber bottles and raw rubber but there was just so much waste They developed this machine called a masticator, and it would basically chew up this rubber and make it into – meld it together and make it into a big single sheet of material, which was really helpful.

29:18Yeah. But they still had that temperature problem until Goodyear hit it. Right. And, again, they reverse-engineered Goodyear's process, went and filed a patent on vulcanization. Yeah, did they rip him off, like, fully? Yes. Yes. Wow. Fully. And apparently it was one of those ones like the phone where Goodyear went to go file a patent and found out that someone else had that Hancock had just a few weeks earlier. So he took him to court. In order to settle, Hancock offered Goodyear 50 % of the patent to drop the lawsuit. And Goodyear said no. And he lost the case. And he died broke. Oh, man. But he was able to generate enough royalties so that his kids were able to live the good life thanks to him.

30:05But he got ripped off for sure. And one other thing about Charles Goodyear, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, he had nothing to do with it. They named it after him in honor of him. Oh, wow. Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. You don't watch the TV show Shark Tank, do you? I do not. I think I've asked you that before. You know the whole concept, right, is these people pitch their businesses to them. Yeah, well, surrounded by shark swimming. Well, that's it. No, they pitch them to the sharks, and they either invest or they don't. Everyone kind of knows the show but you, I guess. But I'm always at home just yelling at these people when they'll offer up like 20 % of their company, and then they'll get offered an investment from a shark and say, but they want like 40%.

30:53And some of these people turn around and walk away, which on one hand, I kind of respect that they don't want to give away that much of their company. But I'm always just thinking, wouldn't you rather own 60 % of a$20 million company than 80 % of a$3 million company? Yeah. Sometimes I think pride gets in the way with these people. Sure, yeah. And they don't think about just how big these people can make their company. Yeah. I don't know. Who's that company, though, that turned down a billion dollars from either Google or Facebook and just kept at it? MySpace? No. I can't. It's one of the big social media brands that you know of that now is just worth gobs more money.

31:40Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is no recipe. Sometimes it is better to hold on to more of your own company because if it gets big, then you own that much more of it. But I'm always kind of like, man, take the money now. And run, as Steve Miller suggested. Did you know Steve Miller's a Scientologist? Is he really? Yeah. Boy, he went off on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. Why? Did they not vote for nominating him? No, no, no. He got inducted and basically trashed them on his way in and out the door. Why? Oh, you'll just have to read it. It's kind of too long to get into. But they were none too happy, I think.

32:18He came across as just a really crabby old guy. Oh, he didn't have like a point or anything? No, he had points, but you'll just have to check it out. I will. We're already getting sidetracked here. Oh, we've been sidetracked, baby. So regardless of who came up with it, even though it was Charles Goodyear, once vulcanization was introduced to the world, all of a sudden, all of these dreams of what you could do with a flexible, durable material that could withstand tremendous pressure and force and heat and cold, too, which was a big one. All of a sudden, the whole world just opened up. And what was interesting, Chuck, was because it also dovetailed with the Industrial Revolution, Brazil, which was the rubber tree capital at the time, went from just being like this kind of old world colony to basically being one of the most important countries on the planet, like virtually within a year or so.

33:19Yeah, and that was true, geez, for a long time until about the mid to late, about 1876 when these British businessmen said, I'm going to sneak these rubber tree seeds out, take them back to England, and we're going to see if these things grow in Southeast Asia, where we have a lot of British colonies, and it turns out it did. And just about 35 years later, the center of the global rubber market shifted to Malaysia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka. The British are thieves in this one. So they kind of totally ripped that off. Yeah. And Southeast Asia was the dominating rubber capital of the world. Which was way better for the Brits and the Americans because we're friends with the Brits.

34:04because that meant that these were British colonies, which meant that the access to this rubber was basically unfettered. Yeah. There were no trade deals. You didn't have to whine and dine a prince or a king or anything like that. You could just be like, we need more rubber, please. Yeah. Which is, I think, how they would order it. Probably so. So everything's going hunky-dory, at least as far as the British and Americans are concerned. The rubber supply is being fulfilled thanks to Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka. And it came at no too soon a time, too, because the automobile was introduced around this time, the mass-produced automobile, we should say.

34:46And those needed four good tires made of rubber. Yeah, and then World War II really, really increased the need for rubber. I think here it says that in total, the Pentagon said that they needed 32 pounds of rubber for every single ground troop in one way or another. Right. That's amazing. Yeah, and that's why it was such a big deal that the Japanese invaded the Pacific because the Pacific Theater featured those countries that were the rubber-producing capital of the world. That's right. That had been under British control. and now all of a sudden our rubber supply was either cut off or in danger.

35:27So the United States, led by FDR, said, hey, four biggest rubber companies, we're going to get together and we need to come up with a synthetic rubber toot suite. So let's get on it. We're all going to split the patent evenly and let's get to work. And in 18 months, they had come up with a synthetic rubber. Amazing. Yep. And we'll get to synthetics a bit more in a minute, But jumping back to the mid-1800s, the story of the rubber band is pretty interesting. These two chaps, Stephen Perry and Thomas Barnabas Daft, great name, TBD, actually, invented the rubber band. The modern, what we know as a rubber band, because they started slicing these.

36:09They had a rubber tube and started slicing these narrow rings from a vulcanized rubber tube. And they were like, here you go. It's called a rubber band. You can put it around your asparagus. Yeah. And everyone was super psyched. Yeah. Except people who ate asparagus. That was a good one, man. And today they still kind of do it in the same way, rubber band-wise. They create this – they mix this latex together with all these chemicals. It depends on what kind of rubber band you're making. And they get this raw rubber compound into a long hollow tube, slip it over a round pipe called a mandrel, expose that to high heat and pressure to vulcanize it.

36:48It cures it and then they slice that up into rubber bands. Yep. Pretty neat. It is pretty neat. You want to take a break and then talk some more about how it's made? Yeah, right after this.

37:16with my mom and dad living in orange county when we bring my five and seven year old to visit we are sometimes in for a two-hour drive that could feel like 10 oh as an avid camper i know all about this we'll pack up the rv and know this is either going to be the trip of a lifetime or a complete disaster. Which is why we load up the iPads with Lingo Kids before we even pull out of the driveway. It's what dreams are made of. Lingo Kids keeps kids engaged and quiet with over 4 ,000 interactive games, songs, and shows that kids simply cannot get enough of. You can pack whatever you think you'll need, but Lingo Kids is the only entertainment you'll need for a stress-free car ride.

37:53Or really, any ride. Plane, train, hovercraft, whatever. Download Lingo Kids for free today. Or unlock even more amazing content with Lingo Kids Plus. Choose the yearly plan and save up to 60%. Search Lingo Kids in the App Store or Google Play. Lingo Kids. Everything kids love. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Will Wheaton, who played Gordy Lachance in Stand By Me 40 years ago and now narrates Stephen King's The Body, the novella that inspired it all. We talk about what it's like to return to a story that shaped his life, channeling his memories of River Phoenix and the recording booth, and why the friendships you have at 12 might be the most important ones you'll ever have.

38:43I know Gordy Lachance. I am Gordy Lachance. Like, I mean, even when I was a little kid, I was Gordy Lachance when I didn't know it. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

39:23Stop, you should, I don't All right, so we've been talking about rubber in its most natural form, and how they transformed that into usable rubber is pretty remarkable, but immediately after World War II, like we were talking about, this creation of synthetic rubber was probably the second biggest invention of all time. Well, maybe not of all time. It was up there, though. Yeah, but when it comes to stretchy things, for sure. Yeah. And apparently the World War II research and development produced not just one, but three different types of easily manufactured synthetic rubbers. Yeah. One was a butadiene rubber.

40:09Another was a styrene butadiene rubber. And that was the one that the government went with for World War II. Right. And it was actually ripped off from the Germans, which they'd come up with something similar previously. And then there's an ethylene propylene monomer. And all three of those make up most of today's synthetic rubbers. Yeah, and they found that this stuff worked really, really well. Just as good as natural rubber. It had all that flex resistance. It didn't deteriorate. Eventually it would. Again, I keep teasing like we're going to get to that, which we will. But they found it was really well suited to replace rubber.

40:49Well, in most applications, like an industrial application, like a tire or a fan belt or something like that. But it didn't have that resilience that natural rubber has. So there was an issue still. There was a kink that needed to be worked out. Well, yeah, as far as using it in textiles, for sure. Exactly. And they actually overcame it in 1959. By they, I mean DuPont Corporation, who employed two chemists that got to work trying to crack this code, the final code of synthetic rubber, how to make it flexible and resilient. Right. That's right. And they started by using a polymer, a polyurethane.

41:31Uh-huh. Right. So, well, we'll talk about polymers in a little bit. But basically, they took a polymer, a urethane-based polymer, and watered it down and forced it through a plate with tiny little holes in it. And what came on the outside were these tiny little threads. Yep. And those tiny little threads were a magical creation known as spandex, the trade name of which originally is Lycra. Yeah, it's amazing. And spandex, they found, had a lot of great applications. Namely, it could accept dyes, so it wasn't just this sort of dull white color. You could make it any color you wanted to. And you could wash it.

42:11It didn't absorb a lot of moisture, and it remained really stable when it was washed and dried at kind of normal, moderate temperatures. So, hey, you can make this, weave it into clothing, throw it in the washer, dye it whatever color you want, and you're good to go. And most importantly, Chuck, it would snap back. It would retain its original shape. That's right. After being stretched. So, yeah, spandex changed everything. I didn't realize it was from the 50s. I didn't either. Yeah. And William Harris makes a pretty good point. He says that spandex might be considered the modern elastic. Uh-huh.

42:46Like it is, it's basically the base of anything stretchy that you use today. Yeah, and it said here, we said it's in all kinds of stuff. They said it's in about 80 % of all clothing bought by Americans. So even if you don't think spandex is in something, it may have a little spandex in there. It's in 80 % of all clothing bought by Americans, 100 % of all spandex pants bought by Americans. Think about that stat for a little while. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, including jeggings, he points out. He calls them pajama jeans, but I've always called them jeggings. Oh, is that the same thing? I believe so, yeah.

43:23Interesting. I hope so. Emily, when we put them on her daughter, she calls them jazzy pants. Oh, yeah, that's a good one, too. But that's, I think, usually due to the pattern more than the snapback. Gotcha. Yeah. So we can sit here and procrastinate for several more minutes if you want, but ultimately we're going to end up on the chemistry part, you realize. Yes, and because I don't understand chemistry, At all. Take it away. We'll get you for this, Chuck. I'll throw in some words here and there. So I don't really know chemistry either, but I know both of us crammed on this. Yeah. So forgive us, all you chemists out there, if we get something wrong, let us know.

44:09But from what we understand... It's magic. Yeah. There you go. The end. So rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, is a polymer. Yes. Right? And it's a specific kind of polymer called an elastomer. It's an elastic polymer. It has stretchiness and resilience. It's flexible. That's right. And any kind of polymer is basically, if you look at the molecular structure of it, it's made up of these long repeating chains of the same unit over and over again. And the units are called monomers. And depending on what the monomer is, that leads to different kinds of polymers. And with elastomers in particular, if you look at some polymers, the structure is bulky and big and compact, and it's rigid and heavy and not flexible at all.

44:59Still other kind of polymers, say like a plastic or a resin, are crystalline in structure, and they fit so well together, they're also rigid and not very flexible either. Yes. Then you have elastomers, which are a kind of polymer. And because of their molecular structure, they are super flexible, super stretchy, and they snap back into place. Yeah, and normally they're, I mean, they liken it to this article like a coiled like a big mass of snakes. Yeah. But they have this really neat quality, these elastomers. When you apply force to it, the molecules actually straighten out in the direction that you're pulling it.

45:36And that's sort of the snapback you're talking about. But as soon as you release it, it goes back to that coiled up arrangement. Right. When you pull it, when you apply force, they line up basically like those snakes head to tail in one single long line. That's a scary snake. Yeah. And then when you release it, it goes back into its original form of that coiled mass, right? Right. Perfect. Okay. One of the reasons why any kind of rubber, natural or synthetic, is flexible, a flexible polymer, is because its glass transition temperature is actually pretty low. Yeah, this is where I kind of just got foggy.

46:11So this is, it's as simple as this, Chuck. A glass transition temperature, it's not a melting point. A melting point is where the substance actually basically just turns into a liquid state, a disordered liquid state. Yeah. The glass transition temperature doesn't affect the molecular makeup of the substance. Instead, it basically applies this property, the flexibility or rigidity. Yeah. It's as simple as that, right? Okay. And so anything that has a low glass transition temperature relative to what we have as normal temperatures outside in the world or in our homes or whatever is going to be flexible and floppy.

46:54Anything with a high glass transition temperature is going to be rigid and hard and not flexible. So just suffice to say, anything rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, has a low glass transition temperature, so it's flexible under normal temperatures. But even if you took a piece of rubber, natural rubber, and you applied the temperature of negative 70 degrees Celsius or negative 94 degrees Fahrenheit, it would crystallize. It's below the glass transition temperature, so it would just basically turn rigid and crystallize. and ultimately would break apart. And that was part of the problem with those early pre-vulcanized rubbers.

47:38They would fall apart because the glass transition temperature is not like an exact moment where the thing converts from flexible to rigid. It's the median of a large thermal window where it starts to get crystalline and rigid and then is completely crystalline and rigid on the other end. So, of course, you would think if you get down to, say, 20 degrees like it would in Boston or New York in the 19th century, and you're walking around with rubber-soled shoes, they're going to crystallize and break off. Right. That's what's going on. It all has to do with the glass transition temperature. Okay.

48:16So during vulcanization, they heat that up with sulfur, and that makes those polymer chains link together with sulfur atoms. I guess that's almost like a glue? Yeah. It's like a molecular glue from what I understand. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so even when you apply intense heat or extreme cold, it will maintain its molecular shape. Yeah, but here's the thing. I've been talking about why your elastic band doesn't last forever and why your socks will eventually be around your ankles. This elastic eventually will lose that snapback due to oxidization. Oxidization? Oxidation. I like oxidization.

48:58But natural rubber, this oxygen, and in particular ozone, is going to start breaking those bonds within just days. So it happens pretty quickly, and that's why we heat and treat rubber like we do. But even still, over time, that ozone, and combine that with light UV radiation, it's another culprit. That's what's going to cause that to eventually break down over time. That would make sense because with vulcanization, what you're doing is adding sulfur to the polymer, right? Yeah. And it would make sense then that either UV radiation or something else could break those bonds between the sulfur and the other ingredients.

49:41And then they would be replaced by oxygen. So oxidation would take place, right? Yeah. So it's pretty much ozone, UV radiation. And then cold actually does make a difference. It's not going to hold up quite as well in cold weather. Like if you take a pair of underwear out in like negative 20 degrees in Minnesota and you start really stretching it out a lot, it's going to lose its elasticity really fast. Oh, yeah. Anybody from Minnesota can tell you that. Yeah. I mean, they may have to buy more underwear than like Hawaii. I have no idea. They all wear union suits up there. Yeah, that's true. so um you want to finish with pat benatar oh man let's bring her out okay come on bat he's gonna do an acoustic set man how great would that be so um we did a little digging and we were trying to figure out who basically started the 80s spandex rocker trend yeah rocker spandex trend she was the first thing that came to my mind oh really yeah i just didn't know exactly how i i would have guessed it went back beyond pat benatar and then i found out that pat benatar has been a musician for much longer than i realized right but um apparently the whole thing happened on halloween of 1977 awesome and by this time pat benatar was already like a pretty regular fixture on the new york city club circuit and so she dressed up as a character from uh Cat Women of the Moon.

51:13Have you seen that movie? No. I haven't either. But apparently, Cat Women on the Moon is a cult classic sci-fi movie. Okay. And I guess they wear a lot of spandex. So she dressed up in a spandex getup and decided to play a show that night at Catch a Rising Star, which is basically her house club. You ever been there? No. I haven't either. Is it still around? I don't think so. Is it? I think I know of it from Comedy Central in the 90s. Yeah, I think that was the name of a show. But I think it was from that club. Oh, was it filmed there? Yeah, I think so. Oh, okay. I could be wrong. But anyway, she was used to playing shows there, but she played the show in this getup, the spandex getup, and noticed that the crowd was into it a lot more than usual.

51:57Then they said, wowie, wow, what's she wearing? Pretty much. It was about as simple as that. She was like, okay, let me try this. I want to do a little experiment. and I'm going to do this again, but not on Halloween. I'm going to dress up again and do the same show. And she did and got another response, like way better than usual response. So she's like, that's it. I'm doing spandex from now on. Wow. And that was that. 1977, Pat Benatar starts the 80s spandex rocker trend. I would count that as the fourth dinner party factoid. Yeah, I would say so too. And if you want a fifth, Catch a Rising Star is a chain of comedy clubs and was also a TV series in Canada.

52:41Ta-da. You got anything else? No. Well, that's it for Elastic, everybody. If you want to know more about it, type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, and who knows what amazing things will come up. That's right. And since I said search bar, it's time for Listener Man. Yeah, I'm going to call this short, but kind of funny. Hey, guys. Quick and trivial email from a fan in Pittsburgh. I, too, appreciated in your episode on body snatching, a live episode on grave robbing. I, too, appreciated how cool Charlie Chaplin's body robber's partner's name was, Gancho Ganev. And I tell you, we did that show a few times, and you and I never ceased to not crack up at the words Gancho Ganev.

53:33That's true. It's still happening. Being Jewish, I thought a little Hebrew-Yiddish languages were involved, and Ganev, in fact, does mean thief. Oh, really? And then he stretches it a bit. Then he says, Gancho, for that matter, seems to be Spanish for hook-like dance moves. and he said Charlie Chaplin was a dancer he said so maybe that's a stretch on the second part but it seems as though Gancho Ganev was born to steal Charlie Chaplin's body I'll give you props on the Ganev part at least and that is from B.D. Wahlberg and he said P.S. you might remember me from Pittsburgh at your live show I asked a question in the Q &A about how you find new ways to rip on the post office and I still Well, remember I gave my Trader Joe's bag to somebody in the audience, and that was BD.

54:27I still have Chuck's Trader Joe's bag hanging in my kitchen. Nice, man. Well, thanks a lot, BD. We appreciate it. It would have been even more ironic had he been referencing the D.B. Cooper episode. Oh, did you hear about the new info? I did, and it actually makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, so for anyone that hasn't seen, they found some actual new science that seems to indicate they found these four elements in the tie that D.B. Cooper wore. And apparently these elements are very specific to work being done by the Boeing company. Yep. So it gives a lot of credence to the theory that he was a Boeing employee.

55:10And even more specifically, because it was on his tie, if he were working the actual machines that were manufacturing this thing, he would have been wearing coveralls or something, not a tie. So it indicates that if he worked for Boeing, he would have been an engineer or a manager who would have been wearing a tie on the floor while he was out there. I think this is the biggest lead they've ever had. I think so, too. Pretty amazing. Yeah. You know who's excited about it? Secret. Oh, yeah. Boy. If you want to know what we're talking about, we did a D.D. Cooper episode, and this popped up. That's right.

55:43It's a live episode that we hope will be available to you soon. What else? Oh, and actually, wow. Boy, this is exciting. We just got literally an email reply from B.D. because I said we were going to be reading this, and I think this bears mentioning. What a daymaker, guys. If you use a pronoun for me, I go by they and them rather than he or she. I know who you're talking about. Because I am a non-binary listener. What up? What up, BD? Thank you. It's good to hear from you. And I'd love to surprise my BFF Carlisle with a great big audio high five. Well, I think that just happened. Wow. All right.

56:23This is like real-time correction slash back and forth with BD. Let's just see what happens. Email Obama real quick. We'll sit here. Let's see what happens next. We're just going to take this ride. All right. Well, thank you, BD. Yeah. Thanks a lot, BD. Good to hear from you. All right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh underscore underscore Clark. You can also hit me up at the official SYSK podcast handle. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at Stuff You Should Know. You can send us both an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com.

57:01And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

57:10For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

57:24With my mom and dad living in Orange County, when we bring my five and seven-year-old to visit, we are sometimes in for a two-hour drive that could feel like 10. Oh, as an avid camper, I know all about this. We'll pack up the RV and know this is either going to be the trip of a lifetime or a complete disaster. Which is why we load up the iPads with Lingo Kids before we even pull out of the driveway. It's what dreams are made of. Lingo Kids keeps kids engaged and quiet with over 4 ,000 interactive games, songs, and shows that kids simply cannot get enough of. You can pack whatever you think you'll need, but Lingo Kids is the only entertainment you'll need for a stress-free car ride.

58:00Or really, any ride. Plane, train, hovercraft, whatever. Download Lingo Kids for free today. Or unlock even more amazing content with Lingo Kids Plus. Choose the yearly plan and save up to 60%. Search Lingo Kids in the App Store or Google Play. Lingo Kids. Everything kids love. Hey everyone, it's Kel Penn. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast, Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode, I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

59:15We'll be right back. For more information, visit TNAwrestling.com. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.