ABSTRACT
In the fifteenth century, Christopher Columbus witnessed South Americans playing a game centered around a bounceable ‘‘solid’’ mass that was produced from the exudate of a tree they called ‘‘weeping wood’’ (1). This material was first scientifically described by C.-M. de la Condamine and Francois Fressneau of France following an expedition to South America in 1736 (2). The English chemist Joseph Priestley gave the name ‘‘rubber’’ to the material obtained by processing the sap from Hevea brasiliensis, a tall hardwood tree (angiosperm) originating in Brazil, when he found that it could be used to rub out pencil marks (2). A rubber is a ‘‘solid’’material that can readily be deformed at room temperature and that upon release of the deforming force will rapidly revert to its original dimensions.
