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Elastics: Where God and Science Smooch · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry. This is Stuff
0:18
Speaker 1: you Should Know, the Sick Edition, the annual sick Edition.
0:23
Speaker 1: You aren't well, my friend. No. And it really stinks
0:26
Speaker 1: to Chuck because, like I like to think that I
0:29
Speaker 1: take pretty good care of myself, so to be able
0:31
Speaker 1: to be felled not once, but twice in just a
0:34
Speaker 1: few months by some stupid bug, it's irritating to me.
0:38
Speaker 1: I know, you get mad every time he gets sick, though,
0:41
Speaker 1: just so you know I do. I hadn't noticed that. Actually,
0:46
Speaker 1: uh my wife is the same way. Well it's not fun,
0:50
Speaker 1: I know, but she gets like kind of yeah. You
0:51
Speaker 1: both get a little angry, like why did this happen
0:54
Speaker 1: to me? I get more pitiful, like, oh, somebody helped me.
0:59
Speaker 1: Oh I've got going on too. So does that mean
1:06
Speaker 1: people have the next like eight episodes to look forward to?
1:09
Speaker 1: This or no? No, man, no way, this is it.
1:14
Speaker 1: This is it right here. I think actually yesterday might
1:16
Speaker 1: have been the worst day. Oh well good, yeah, I
1:20
Speaker 1: mean today was a close second. But we'll find out. Yeah,
1:23
Speaker 1: it is spad. I gotta be a pro man, I
1:25
Speaker 1: gotta I gotta get well, the show must go on
1:29
Speaker 1: as so today, Chuck Charles, we're talking elastic. Yeah, did
1:37
Speaker 1: you know much about this? No? I thought this is
1:40
Speaker 1: actually super interesting and it also contained to uh, what
1:44
Speaker 1: we like to call um dinner party factoids that people
1:49
Speaker 1: can bust out. We need a jingle that says that
1:52
Speaker 1: so we can play it when when it comes up. Yeah,
1:55
Speaker 1: I mean there's lots of cool stuff in here, and
1:57
Speaker 1: please don't correct us on factoid because oh yeah, man,
2:00
Speaker 1: that's so two thousand, nine eleven. Maybe, but yeah, two
2:05
Speaker 1: really cool facts in here that I think people can
2:08
Speaker 1: just keep in their hip pocket. Okay, are you good?
2:11
Speaker 1: So until we get a jingle made, I'll bet NOL
2:13
Speaker 1: will make one for us. But until we do, maybe
2:15
Speaker 1: you should you want to practice one? Um, jeez, what's
2:19
Speaker 1: a good dinner party jingle? It should It should be
2:22
Speaker 1: like wine glasses and plates and forks and things clinking right,
2:27
Speaker 1: and then maybe like this Orwellian voice going dinner party
2:32
Speaker 1: fact toward. Yeah. Here we are eight years in, still evolving. Yeah,
2:38
Speaker 1: it's a work in progress. Okay, So we're talking elastic Chuck.
2:43
Speaker 1: I didn't know that much about it either. In this
2:45
Speaker 1: article written by one William Harris, yeah it is. It
2:49
Speaker 1: makes a pretty good point um that it's just one
2:52
Speaker 1: of those things, and specifically say, like a rubber band,
2:55
Speaker 1: you just kind of think it's always been around, and
2:59
Speaker 1: you know you've always you just think, like you know,
3:01
Speaker 1: elastic waistbands have been around for eons. It's basically the
3:05
Speaker 1: second thing discovered after fire, is what I've always thought
3:09
Speaker 1: until today, since Adam first popped Eve's bra strap, it's
3:14
Speaker 1: been around. Yeah, you'd think that's actually not the case
3:16
Speaker 1: at all. It's a elastic itself. And elastic, we should say,
3:20
Speaker 1: is basically any rubber, natural or synthetic, uh thread woven
3:26
Speaker 1: with another kind of fabric usually like say cotton or
3:30
Speaker 1: nylon or whatever that produces a stretchy fabric that's elastic. Right. Yeah,
3:35
Speaker 1: Like I think a lot of people don't even realize
3:37
Speaker 1: if they took their underwear waistband, don't do this because
3:41
Speaker 1: then you ruined it. But maybe if you have an
3:43
Speaker 1: old pair, if you just kind of cut it, you
3:45
Speaker 1: would see these these little elastic threads. It's all it is, Yes,
3:49
Speaker 1: you little rubber bands or or you could go to
3:53
Speaker 1: like a thrift store or something by a pair and
3:55
Speaker 1: then cut those If you're buying a thrift store underwear,
3:58
Speaker 1: then I don't know, I wouldn't recommend that. Yeah, I
4:02
Speaker 1: don't think they even sell it. Actually they do. We're
4:05
Speaker 1: really ye used underwear. Yes, wow, so skid free, that's probably.
4:15
Speaker 1: That's gotta be one of the more difficult tasks. It's
4:17
Speaker 1: like getting those things just prepared for resale, you know, yeah,
4:24
Speaker 1: I don't want to be unprepared for resale duty to
4:26
Speaker 1: day anyway, when you do, if you cut it open,
4:31
Speaker 1: if you look very closely, have you ever done this?
4:33
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen like an elastic waistband come come
4:36
Speaker 1: loose as you've got If you look really closely, you
4:39
Speaker 1: can be like going to like the little threads that
4:42
Speaker 1: are sticking out, because some just hang limp and loose.
4:45
Speaker 1: That's cotton. Nobody cares about that. But the ones that
4:48
Speaker 1: are just kind of still sticking out a little bit
4:50
Speaker 1: and you can throw them though. That's the that's the
4:53
Speaker 1: rubber or um natural or synthetic rubber that that gives
4:57
Speaker 1: that elastic it's stretchiness. And again it's a fairly recent invention,
5:02
Speaker 1: especially if you're talking about, um, waste bands for underpants. Yeah,
5:06
Speaker 1: and especially if you're talking about elastic that really kind
5:09
Speaker 1: of worked. There were two sort of dives into making elastic,
5:14
Speaker 1: and one quite a long time ago and then one
5:17
Speaker 1: more recently that obviously worked much better. And basically the
5:21
Speaker 1: reason it worked much more better more recently is better
5:24
Speaker 1: techniques to making rubber and then better techniques changing that
5:28
Speaker 1: rubber into something that you could actually use, like in
5:31
Speaker 1: a wasteband right exactly, but we've known about rubber for
5:36
Speaker 1: a very long time since well I should say those
5:39
Speaker 1: of us in the West have known about it for
5:40
Speaker 1: a very long time. Those indigenous peoples of the Amazon
5:44
Speaker 1: have known about it even longer. But I interrupted. You
5:46
Speaker 1: were talking about waste bands. Oh okay, so yeah, so
5:51
Speaker 1: with with underwear waste bands in particular, right, Yes, Um,
5:55
Speaker 1: apparently humans have felt shame uh for thousands of years
6:00
Speaker 1: because the oldest pair of underwear, identifiable underwear are seven
6:05
Speaker 1: thousand years old and he bought him at Goodwill right
6:09
Speaker 1: last week. So the these this underwear originally, well, even
6:14
Speaker 1: before that, I should say, um, there was something called
6:16
Speaker 1: breech cloth and that was just basically strips of leather
6:19
Speaker 1: that just kind of hung down and coverage junk maybe
6:22
Speaker 1: kept the gnats out that kind of thing, right, or
6:24
Speaker 1: kept them in. Yeah, that was your things probably catch
6:28
Speaker 1: the um. And those are even older than the first underwear,
6:35
Speaker 1: which would be considered a loin cloth, of course, which
6:37
Speaker 1: is basically that. And there are loincloths that are at
6:40
Speaker 1: least five thousand years or seven thousand years old, and um,
6:44
Speaker 1: they are basically in uh linen diaper that is folded
6:50
Speaker 1: in a certain way, worn by grown ups, including very famously,
6:54
Speaker 1: most recently Gandhi used to wear a loincloth everywhere. It
6:57
Speaker 1: was called the dati um. But it's a loincloth, no
7:00
Speaker 1: matter what you call it, that's right. So those stuck
7:04
Speaker 1: around for quite a while in the West, and it
7:07
Speaker 1: wasn't until basically the Middle Ages that someone said we
7:11
Speaker 1: can do better than this, Yeah, and they brought around
7:14
Speaker 1: these things that are that were much longer than a loincloth. Um,
7:18
Speaker 1: most of them kind of for my research, these braids
7:21
Speaker 1: be r A I E s went below the knee even. Yeah,
7:26
Speaker 1: they were like a cross between a loincloth and jams. Yeah,
7:30
Speaker 1: sort of, Um, it says here that they were laced
7:33
Speaker 1: to the waist and legs, but um, there may be
7:35
Speaker 1: lace under the waist, but they're also generally kind of
7:39
Speaker 1: rolled over many times at the waist, I think to
7:42
Speaker 1: probably tighten it up a bit. Yeah, and everyone said, great,
7:45
Speaker 1: this is work. Yeah for a while, I'm happy with this,
7:48
Speaker 1: and um, you know, then it went a different way
7:50
Speaker 1: and we should do an entire episode just on course
7:53
Speaker 1: it's I know, there's a good article on the site
7:55
Speaker 1: on it, but um, after Braise, the the called the
8:00
Speaker 1: union suit was invented? What dinner party fact? Okay, there
8:05
Speaker 1: you go. I never knew. I thought it was called
8:08
Speaker 1: the union suit because it had something somewhere along the
8:11
Speaker 1: line to do with unions, but no, in fact, the
8:14
Speaker 1: word union suit. Now we know them as long John's,
8:17
Speaker 1: even though long Johns are generally two piece. The one
8:20
Speaker 1: piece union suit is called that because it is one piece.
8:23
Speaker 1: It is the union of a top and a bottom undergarment. Yep,
8:27
Speaker 1: that's right. It's a one piece long John with a
8:29
Speaker 1: flap in the bottom. They usually button all the way
8:32
Speaker 1: up front from the growing up to the neck. Do
8:34
Speaker 1: you have any of these? I'm wearing a couple of pair, right,
8:37
Speaker 1: now obviously you just can't see him because they're under
8:40
Speaker 1: my clothes. Do you really have some? No? I have
8:43
Speaker 1: Long John's. I've got this one called the Silkies that
8:45
Speaker 1: work really well. Yeah. Um, but I don't have a
8:48
Speaker 1: union suit. No, do you know I don't anymore? My
8:52
Speaker 1: brothers still Scott swears by the union suit. Um. I
8:57
Speaker 1: think he has the classic red and then of course
9:00
Speaker 1: they famously have like you said, the it's either called
9:04
Speaker 1: an access hatch. I've also seen them called a drop
9:07
Speaker 1: seat or a fireman's flap. Yeah, I saw that too.
9:11
Speaker 1: Where you can see that, Yeah, where you can unbutton
9:13
Speaker 1: your you know, because generally you're wearing this out in
9:16
Speaker 1: the cold, so you don't want to stripped down to
9:20
Speaker 1: the naked if you want to go pp or poopoo, right,
9:23
Speaker 1: so you just open the old access hatch and there
9:25
Speaker 1: you have it. Yeah. Now that see that to me
9:27
Speaker 1: makes sense, um in the nineteenth century when the union
9:31
Speaker 1: suit was invented. Today, though, it's like, I guess Scott
9:35
Speaker 1: just likes to add a little panic too when he
9:38
Speaker 1: has to tinkle, like having to get that flap open.
9:42
Speaker 1: I think he's just a classicist, not classicist, a who's
9:46
Speaker 1: someone who's into the classic things. Classicist. Okay, that sounds
9:50
Speaker 1: like he doesn't like poor people. That's a classist. Okay,
9:55
Speaker 1: that extra makes a big difference. Okay, he's a classicist
9:58
Speaker 1: then yeah, yeah, okay, so you should tell him this.
10:02
Speaker 1: Here's another little sub dinner party factoid. Union suits were
10:06
Speaker 1: originally invented for women from what I understand, all right,
10:10
Speaker 1: and they were invented in response to the corset craze
10:13
Speaker 1: because apparently courses were so out of hand. It was
10:15
Speaker 1: basically like remember our footbinding episode. So but that's basically
10:20
Speaker 1: what women in Europe and the United States, in the
10:23
Speaker 1: western countries were doing with corsets. They were engaging in
10:27
Speaker 1: what was amounted to footbinding, but with their waists, they
10:31
Speaker 1: were they were literally deforming themselves, uh, using corsets. And
10:36
Speaker 1: and there was a Reformation movement against the corset and
10:40
Speaker 1: against that look and what it's fall and ultimately was
10:43
Speaker 1: the union suit, which were so great that men were like,
10:46
Speaker 1: these are ours, now, yeah, we should do one. Of course,
10:50
Speaker 1: it's I assume that they did this because men were like,
10:53
Speaker 1: no more of an hour glass. Yeah and yeah, and
10:57
Speaker 1: I think that's where the Reformation came out of like,
11:00
Speaker 1: shut up, man, do you have any like? We're disfigured
11:03
Speaker 1: now thanks to you idiots. Uh well, I hate to
11:07
Speaker 1: pack another dinner party fact right next to the other one,
11:10
Speaker 1: but that's kind of where we are. So my second
11:14
Speaker 1: factoid that you should bring up next time you're among
11:16
Speaker 1: friends or next time you see an injured friend perhaps
11:19
Speaker 1: is if they're using an AS bandage, ask them what
11:22
Speaker 1: it stands for and they'll say, uh, what do you mean?
11:26
Speaker 1: But it, in fact is an an acronym. Correct, yes
11:30
Speaker 1: it is, And what does it stand for? All cotton, elastic, ace,
11:34
Speaker 1: all shot an elastic bandage. I never knew that until
11:37
Speaker 1: today and it's been around since en apparently that the
11:41
Speaker 1: three M company introduced it. Amazing um. And so so okay,
11:46
Speaker 1: you've got an ACE bandage, which is essentially, uh, an
11:50
Speaker 1: elastic waste band used to to keep Shack's elbow in place?
11:57
Speaker 1: Right Seaquille O'Neil? Yeah, all right, um, what you do
12:02
Speaker 1: you think? This is? What's what's crazy is uh? This
12:05
Speaker 1: is eighteen that that three M introduced the ACE, and
12:09
Speaker 1: it took until the forties before somebody thought, why don't
12:13
Speaker 1: we just like attach like underpants a lowincloth to that
12:19
Speaker 1: and as we pull it up, snap it in place
12:21
Speaker 1: and be like, oh baby, modal. I guess because I
12:25
Speaker 1: mean the only thing I can think of is because
12:27
Speaker 1: they were tying them and they disfigured. Well, that works
12:30
Speaker 1: pretty well for now, Yeah, I guess, you know. I mean,
12:34
Speaker 1: that's what That's what William Harris says. He says it
12:37
Speaker 1: was basically a sort of fashion inertia. That's everything was fine,
12:41
Speaker 1: Like you could use buttons or ties or something like
12:44
Speaker 1: that and keep it in play, so who cares. But
12:47
Speaker 1: it's just so much easier to pull up your underpants,
12:49
Speaker 1: snap them in place, and go, oh baby, that's right.
12:54
Speaker 1: But regardless of um, what you're talking about here, these fabrics,
12:58
Speaker 1: including elastic, are made with a loom. And if you've
13:02
Speaker 1: ever seen a loom at work, uh, or a at work, yeah,
13:08
Speaker 1: it's amazing to watch into like, what the hell is
13:10
Speaker 1: this loom doing here? Well, not at your job, but
13:14
Speaker 1: you know, I know what you mean. Sure, have you
13:17
Speaker 1: ever seen a loom doing its thing? It's pretty impressive. Um,
13:20
Speaker 1: And what I mean it's really not that complicated either. Basically,
13:24
Speaker 1: all it's doing is allowing these lengthwise threads to be
13:28
Speaker 1: interlaced with with with wise threads the warp in the weft. Yeah,
13:33
Speaker 1: which is not a bad band name, by the way. No,
13:35
Speaker 1: it's not especially like like um proto folk. Yeah, well,
13:39
Speaker 1: that's exactly what it would be. That would be at
13:42
Speaker 1: least three guys wearing vests in that band. Uh that
13:47
Speaker 1: may have been woven with a loom, yeah right, you know,
13:51
Speaker 1: and maybe uh pocket watches with the chains totally, but
13:56
Speaker 1: that's all loom does. It goes you know, it allows
13:59
Speaker 1: this interlacing place, and that's what's happening with elastic. It
14:02
Speaker 1: just takes the place of the yarn, and it's it's uh,
14:06
Speaker 1: well part of the yarn, half of the yarn, or
14:08
Speaker 1: a portion of the yarn. Well, yeah, because in the
14:10
Speaker 1: in the case of a waist band, you're obviously introducing
14:14
Speaker 1: other fabrics as well, like cotton probably or something else. Yeah,
14:17
Speaker 1: And that's the case with any elastic. Elastic is again
14:20
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a type of fiber woven together
14:24
Speaker 1: with some sort of rubber and to create this new stretchy,
14:31
Speaker 1: resilient fabric that's elastic. You want to take a nose
14:36
Speaker 1: blow break? Thank you, char All right, we're back. You're good. Yeah,
15:10
Speaker 1: I should say also, like I keep hammering home what
15:13
Speaker 1: the definition of elastic is. Then we're talking about elastic waistbands,
15:17
Speaker 1: and that's what you think of typically. But again, any
15:19
Speaker 1: fabric with fiber of one type and rubber woven together
15:24
Speaker 1: is elastic, and that has tons and tons of uses.
15:28
Speaker 1: Like bungee cords are elastic, right, um uh, you know
15:34
Speaker 1: everything else that's like that is like elastic. Well, you know,
15:38
Speaker 1: in your socks a lot of times they will be
15:41
Speaker 1: I mean there's elastic, and you know we'll get to
15:44
Speaker 1: spandex later. Um, but that that stuff is in many, many,
15:47
Speaker 1: many garments that you wear today. You may realize that
15:50
Speaker 1: you have the stuff in your clothing, right, everything from
15:53
Speaker 1: the the neck of your shirt perhaps two um, maybe
15:58
Speaker 1: the tongue of your shoes. Sometimes. Yeah, fancy shoes will
16:02
Speaker 1: have elastic in them. Those jeans that you wear to
16:04
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving dinner, they have an elastic waste. Oh I know
16:09
Speaker 1: what jeans you're talking about. I don't wear those. They're
16:12
Speaker 1: pleaded jeans, which is just weird looking. I just wear
16:15
Speaker 1: button flies. Oh yeah, so you just go pop yep,
16:19
Speaker 1: pop a couple out. You're all set that's right. You
16:23
Speaker 1: can stuff a lot of extra bits in there. All right,
16:27
Speaker 1: So let's um, should we get in the way back
16:29
Speaker 1: machine a bit and go back to uh the than
16:33
Speaker 1: uh I guess the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries. Huh, all right,
16:43
Speaker 1: we're pirates. Oh man, I'm glad you brought that up.
16:46
Speaker 1: I read this really interesting article. I found it on
16:49
Speaker 1: I think on long form, but it's from the National
16:52
Speaker 1: Endowment for the Humanities like magazine website, and this guy
16:57
Speaker 1: wrote an article about how just thoroughly we misunderstand pirates
17:04
Speaker 1: and how our conception of pirates took place basically in
17:08
Speaker 1: one decade between seventeen I think twenty six and thirty six,
17:13
Speaker 1: and everything we think of as pirates is crammed into
17:16
Speaker 1: that ten years. Everything before and after it's totally different
17:20
Speaker 1: from our conception of pirates, and that they were actually
17:22
Speaker 1: very frequently they were just sailors who would go attack
17:26
Speaker 1: like a vessel in the Indian Ocean for one big
17:28
Speaker 1: haul and then flee to the colonies and buy a
17:31
Speaker 1: bunch of pigs and set up a farm and live
17:33
Speaker 1: as like upstanding citizens from that point on. And some
17:36
Speaker 1: of them were like lieutenant governors. Um. It was a
17:39
Speaker 1: really interesting article that I recommend tremendously. Obviously, did we
17:44
Speaker 1: not cover that in our Pirates episode eighteen years ago? No,
17:49
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have known that this is a brand new article.
17:52
Speaker 1: I'm sure we just totally fell for everything. And apparently
17:55
Speaker 1: that's it's not we like, that's not our fault that
17:59
Speaker 1: the guy's article and idea is is pretty new, which
18:03
Speaker 1: is one of these things that historically everyone kind of
18:06
Speaker 1: bought in on. Interesting to me that way, you got it?
18:10
Speaker 1: All right, So we're talking pirates here, and not just
18:12
Speaker 1: pirates but sailors explorers basically anyone who got on a
18:16
Speaker 1: ship in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds
18:20
Speaker 1: and went exploring. Yeah, and uh they you know what
18:25
Speaker 1: they did was they would go off and find things
18:27
Speaker 1: that they didn't have in their home country. Say, oh
18:29
Speaker 1: my god, what is this? Let me bring it back
18:32
Speaker 1: Cinnamon member Cinnamon episode. Yeah, absolutely, that's a great example.
18:36
Speaker 1: But one of the things they found in Central and
18:39
Speaker 1: South America was what the French called uh cowchook and
18:45
Speaker 1: uh it's an Indian term meaning weeping wood. And it's
18:48
Speaker 1: basically what they're talking about are now, is it an
18:51
Speaker 1: actual rubber tree, ye behavior brazilansus the rubber tree which
18:57
Speaker 1: literally oozes milky latex. Yeah naturally. Yeah, and the the
19:03
Speaker 1: earliest sailors that encountered, um, the indigenous natives of the Amazon.
19:09
Speaker 1: We're like, what's that stuff you're like putting out on
19:11
Speaker 1: your outerwear and it's keeping the rain out? Or what's
19:14
Speaker 1: that weird flexible bottle you're you're using? And they explained
19:20
Speaker 1: it to him, and those guys said, awesome, you know
19:22
Speaker 1: who love this, my fellow Europeans. So they took it
19:26
Speaker 1: back with them and then they said, and what are
19:28
Speaker 1: those awesome drugs that you give us in liquid for
19:30
Speaker 1: him every night after dinner. They said, oh yeah, husky Yeah,
19:33
Speaker 1: and they went, we'll take some of that hump too. Yeah.
19:35
Speaker 1: Can we get it to go back of that stuff?
19:38
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, they um, they were already used in
19:41
Speaker 1: the stuff because they found out when um, when it
19:44
Speaker 1: was dried out. Basically you could use it for a
19:46
Speaker 1: lot of things, like you said, bottles, shoes. It's just
19:50
Speaker 1: like this, you know, flexible rubbery material. Yeah right, so
19:54
Speaker 1: everything's hunky dory. This is a brand new thing. Europe
19:57
Speaker 1: starting to go crazy for it. But what they figured
20:00
Speaker 1: out pretty quickly was that you you couldn't do a
20:05
Speaker 1: lot with it, right, As we'll find out later. Um,
20:08
Speaker 1: rubber has a an unusual natural chemistry, and it just
20:12
Speaker 1: so happens that in the normal range of temperatures outside
20:16
Speaker 1: of the tropics, UM, it can tend to fall apart
20:19
Speaker 1: pretty easily. Uh. It has a narrow range of temperatures
20:23
Speaker 1: that that allow its usefulness. Right, So once you take
20:26
Speaker 1: it up to above the equator to say, like um,
20:30
Speaker 1: Europe or the United States or whatever. Uh, And they did. Um.
20:34
Speaker 1: They thought it was great. They thought it was terrific.
20:36
Speaker 1: People went crazy for it. Joseph Priestley actually came up
20:40
Speaker 1: with a dinner party factoy that I'm sure you'd love
20:42
Speaker 1: to share. Uh, which one, Oh you didn't. This wasn't
20:46
Speaker 1: one of them, now, I blew mine on the two.
20:50
Speaker 1: Joseph Priestley, who was very famous chemist, Jason Priestley's triple
20:56
Speaker 1: great uncle. We made that same joke in the nst episode.
21:00
Speaker 1: I'll bet we did, because yeah, that's where he popped up.
21:03
Speaker 1: That's right, Thanks for that. Oh and the nitrous oxide one. Yeah,
21:07
Speaker 1: so he got his hands on some of this because
21:09
Speaker 1: everybody's like he's the only chemist alive, right now, give
21:12
Speaker 1: it to him and he's like, you know what, this
21:14
Speaker 1: is amazing. I'm writing a pencil and then I'm rubbing
21:17
Speaker 1: this this latextkachuk um and it's it's rubbing out the
21:23
Speaker 1: pencil marks. And that gave rise to the term rubber.
21:28
Speaker 1: Oh that's how the name yeah came around. Yea, from rubbing,
21:32
Speaker 1: from rubbing out pencil marks, erasing ubber. Because remember the
21:37
Speaker 1: British love to change everything with an error on the end,
21:40
Speaker 1: like soccer is actually shortened association, uh football, like a
21:45
Speaker 1: soccer became soccer. There you go, rubber. That's pretty interesting.
21:51
Speaker 1: I don't know how I screwed it past that one.
21:54
Speaker 1: I love that one. So it became a big deal,
21:56
Speaker 1: and everyone, um you know that had a little money
22:00
Speaker 1: to invest thought, hey, we can make a lot of
22:01
Speaker 1: dough with this stuff. We can transform that into something useful,
22:06
Speaker 1: like let's say in a garment. Um. But like you said,
22:09
Speaker 1: they had this problem that it was a very narrow
22:11
Speaker 1: range of temperatures where they could find it useful. So
22:14
Speaker 1: a couple of dudes uh started working on it. We've
22:18
Speaker 1: talked about Mr Charles Goodyear before we talked about him
22:21
Speaker 1: and I don't know, but I mean, definitely the good
22:25
Speaker 1: Year Blimps episode. But um, it seems like, do we
22:29
Speaker 1: not do one in vulcanization. I don't remember. I was
22:32
Speaker 1: looking up rubber or something because some of the stuff
22:35
Speaker 1: in the extra source that I said. She was kind
22:37
Speaker 1: of like talked about this before. Yeah, we haven't done
22:41
Speaker 1: this entire episode, have we? No? Definitely not. Okay, If so,
22:45
Speaker 1: then I really am just totally out of my mind.
22:49
Speaker 1: So good Year was one. He was working in the US,
22:51
Speaker 1: and then another guy named Thomas Hancock, an English inventor,
22:55
Speaker 1: partnered with a dude named Charles McIntosh and they started
22:59
Speaker 1: making raincoats basically, yeah, the Macintosh, the classic Macintosh. Yeah.
23:05
Speaker 1: And so Charles Thomas Hancock was already pretty well situated too,
23:11
Speaker 1: he was already working on it, right, But Charles Goodyear
23:15
Speaker 1: um had that breakthrough first. And it was actually a
23:18
Speaker 1: really big deal that he had this breakthrough because in
23:20
Speaker 1: the early eighteen thirties, Charles Goodyear basically became obsessed with
23:25
Speaker 1: cracking the rubber coat. He just knew it could be
23:27
Speaker 1: used to be made into something useful, right, And he
23:33
Speaker 1: became so personally committed to it. He all of his
23:36
Speaker 1: investors went away. He went into Debtor's prison so regularly
23:40
Speaker 1: he referred to it as his hotel. Um. Six of
23:43
Speaker 1: his twelve children didn't make it to adulthood. They were
23:46
Speaker 1: just that poor. They they had to sell their dinner wear.
23:50
Speaker 1: So he made plates for him out of rubber. Um.
23:53
Speaker 1: It was really really rough. So the idea that he
23:55
Speaker 1: had this breakthrough um was just enormously rewarding for him. Right. Unfortunately,
24:01
Speaker 1: as he was shopping this stuff around, this vulcanization process
24:05
Speaker 1: or the vulcanized rubber, some of it fell into the
24:07
Speaker 1: hands of Tamas Hancock and he reverse engineered it. Yeah,
24:12
Speaker 1: and what he basically discovered was if you slow cooked
24:15
Speaker 1: latex with sulfur, it could it could basically transform rubber
24:19
Speaker 1: into a very durable material that uh, it was hardy
24:24
Speaker 1: under all kinds of temperature ranges. It would always snap back.
24:28
Speaker 1: Um well, not always and forever, which we'll get too
24:31
Speaker 1: later too. As you know, that waistband will sometimes leave
24:35
Speaker 1: you disappointed eventually, that's why you end up buying new underwear.
24:40
Speaker 1: Um well, one of a couple of reasons you buy
24:42
Speaker 1: new one awear, take it to the thrift store. Yeah exactly,
24:48
Speaker 1: but yeah, he that is what vulcanization is. And um,
24:51
Speaker 1: Handcock and McIntosh what they were doing. Uh, they didn't
24:55
Speaker 1: crack that code first, but they they developed called something
24:59
Speaker 1: called the masticator. Basically, they had been been making elastic
25:03
Speaker 1: threads by slicing it from rubber bottles and raw rubber,
25:07
Speaker 1: but there was just so much waste. They developed this
25:09
Speaker 1: machine called a masticator and it would basically chew up
25:13
Speaker 1: this rubber and make it into meld it together and
25:16
Speaker 1: make it into a big single sheet of material, which
25:19
Speaker 1: was really helpful. But they still had that temperature problem
25:22
Speaker 1: until good Year hit it right and and again they
25:25
Speaker 1: were verse engineered. Goodyear's process went and file the patent
25:29
Speaker 1: on vulcanization and they rip him off like fully, yes, fully,
25:33
Speaker 1: and um apparently it was one of those ones like
25:35
Speaker 1: the phone where good Year when to go file a
25:38
Speaker 1: patent and found out that someone else had that Handcock
25:40
Speaker 1: had just a few weeks earlier, so he took him
25:43
Speaker 1: to court. Um in order to settle Hancock offered good
25:47
Speaker 1: Year of the patent to drop the lawsuit, and good
25:51
Speaker 1: Year said no, and he lost the case and he
25:54
Speaker 1: died broken but he was able to, Um, he was
25:59
Speaker 1: able to generate enough royalties so that his kids were
26:02
Speaker 1: able to uh to live the good like thanks to him. Um,
26:06
Speaker 1: but he uh yeah, he got ripped off for sure.
26:09
Speaker 1: And and one other thing about the about Charles good Year,
26:12
Speaker 1: the Goodyear Rubber or Tyre and Rubber company, he he
26:16
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with it. They named it after
26:17
Speaker 1: him in honor of him. Oh wow, Yeah, I thought
26:20
Speaker 1: that was pretty cool. Uh. You don't watch the TV
26:22
Speaker 1: show Shark Tank, do you? I do not. I think
26:26
Speaker 1: I've asked you that before. I you know, the whole concept,
26:28
Speaker 1: right as these people pitch their businesses to them. Yeah,
26:31
Speaker 1: well surrounded by sharks swimming now, they pitched them to
26:36
Speaker 1: the sharks, and they either investor they don't. Everyone kind
26:38
Speaker 1: of knows the show, but you I guess, um, but uh,
26:42
Speaker 1: I'm always at home just yelling at these people when
26:45
Speaker 1: you know, they'll offer up like of their company and
26:48
Speaker 1: then they'll get offered an investment from a shark for
26:52
Speaker 1: you know, and say, but they want like and some
26:55
Speaker 1: of these people like turn around and walk away, which,
26:58
Speaker 1: on one hand, I kind of respect that they don't
27:00
Speaker 1: want to give away that much of their company. But like,
27:03
Speaker 1: I'm always just thinking, wouldn't you rather own of a
27:07
Speaker 1: twenty million dollar company than of a three million dollar company?
27:13
Speaker 1: Like sometimes I think pride gets in the way with
27:15
Speaker 1: these people. Sure, and they don't think about just how
27:19
Speaker 1: big these people can make their company. Yeah. I don't
27:22
Speaker 1: know who's that company though? That that UM turned down
27:26
Speaker 1: a billion dollars from either Google or Facebook and just
27:31
Speaker 1: kept at it and now it's my Space. No I can't.
27:35
Speaker 1: It's one of like the big social media brains that
27:37
Speaker 1: you know of UM that that now was just worth
27:41
Speaker 1: gobs more money? Really? Yeah? Yeah, I mean you know,
27:44
Speaker 1: there's no recipe, Like sometimes it is better to hold
27:47
Speaker 1: onto more of your own company because if it gets big,
27:50
Speaker 1: then you own that much more of it. But it's right,
27:53
Speaker 1: I'm always kind of like, man, take the money now.
27:55
Speaker 1: And is Steve Miller suggested? Is you just Steve Miller's
27:59
Speaker 1: a science pologist? Is he really? Yeah? Boy? He went
28:03
Speaker 1: off on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.
28:05
Speaker 1: Why did they not um vote phenomenating? No? No, no,
28:08
Speaker 1: he got inducted in like basically trash them on his
28:12
Speaker 1: way in and out the door. Oh, you'll just have
28:16
Speaker 1: to read it's kind of too long to get into.
28:17
Speaker 1: But they were none too happy. I think he came
28:20
Speaker 1: across as just a really crabby old guy. Oh he
28:23
Speaker 1: didn't have like a point or anything. No, he had points.
28:26
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, you'll you'll just have to check it out,
28:30
Speaker 1: I will. We're already getting sidetracked here. Oh we've been
28:33
Speaker 1: side checked baby so um. When regardless of who came
28:37
Speaker 1: up with it, even though it was Charles Goodyear, once
28:40
Speaker 1: vulcanization was introduced to the world, all of a sudden,
28:43
Speaker 1: all of these dreams of what you could do with
28:46
Speaker 1: a flexible, durable material that can withstand tremendous pressure and
28:50
Speaker 1: force and heat, um and cold too, which was a
28:55
Speaker 1: big one. Uh, all of a sudden, the whole world
28:58
Speaker 1: just opened up. And what was interesting, Chuck, was because
29:02
Speaker 1: it also dovetailed with the Industrial Revolution. Brazil, which was
29:07
Speaker 1: the the rubber tree capital at the time, went from
29:11
Speaker 1: just being like this kind of old world quality to
29:15
Speaker 1: basically being one of the most important countries on the
29:17
Speaker 1: planet and like virtually within a year or so. Yeah,
29:21
Speaker 1: And that was true, uh geez for a long time
29:25
Speaker 1: until about the mid too late, about eighteen seventy six,
29:29
Speaker 1: when these British businessmen said, I'm gonna sneak these rubber
29:33
Speaker 1: tree seeds out, uh taken back to England and uh,
29:37
Speaker 1: we're gonna see if these things grow in Southeast Asia,
29:39
Speaker 1: where we have a lot of British colonies. And it
29:41
Speaker 1: turns out it did, and just about thirty five years
29:44
Speaker 1: later the center of the global rubber market shifted to Malaysia,
29:48
Speaker 1: Singapore and Sri Lanka. As British are thieves in this one,
29:52
Speaker 1: so they kind of like totally ripped that off. Yeah,
29:55
Speaker 1: and Southeast Asia was the dominating rubber capital of the world.
30:00
Speaker 1: It was way better for the Brits and the Americans
30:03
Speaker 1: because we're friends with the Brits. Um. Because that meant
30:07
Speaker 1: that these were these were British colonies, um, which meant
30:10
Speaker 1: that the access to this rubber was basically unfettered. There
30:14
Speaker 1: were no trade deals. You didn't have to wine and
30:16
Speaker 1: dine a prince or a king or anything like that.
30:18
Speaker 1: You could just be like, we need more rubber please, um,
30:22
Speaker 1: which is I think how they would order it probably. So,
30:26
Speaker 1: so everything's going hunky dorry, at least as far as
30:29
Speaker 1: the British and Americans are concerned. The rubber supplies being
30:32
Speaker 1: fulfilled thanks to Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and um. It
30:38
Speaker 1: came it no too soon a time too, because the
30:43
Speaker 1: automobile was introduced around this time, the mass produced automobile,
30:47
Speaker 1: we should say, and those needed for good tires made
30:51
Speaker 1: of rubber. Yeah. And then World War Two really really
30:55
Speaker 1: increase the need for rubber. Um. I think here it
30:58
Speaker 1: says that in total, the Pentagon said that they needed
31:01
Speaker 1: thirty two pounds of rubber for every single ground troop
31:05
Speaker 1: in one way or another. That's amazing. Yeah, and that's
31:10
Speaker 1: why it was such a big deal that the Japanese
31:12
Speaker 1: invaded the Pacific, because that the Pacific theater featured those
31:17
Speaker 1: countries that were the rubber producing capital of the world
31:20
Speaker 1: that have been under British control. And um, now all
31:25
Speaker 1: of a sudden a rubber supply was either cut off
31:27
Speaker 1: or in danger. So the United States, led by FDR, said, hey, uh,
31:33
Speaker 1: four biggest rubber companies, we're gonna get together and we
31:36
Speaker 1: need to come up with a synthetic rubber too, suite.
31:39
Speaker 1: Let's get on it. We're all gonna split the patent evenly,
31:42
Speaker 1: and let's get to work. And in eighteen months they
31:45
Speaker 1: had come up with a synthetic rubber amazing yep. Uh.
31:49
Speaker 1: And we'll get to synthetics a bit more in a minute.
31:51
Speaker 1: But jumping back to the mid eighteen hundreds, the story
31:53
Speaker 1: of the rubber band is pretty interesting. These two chaps,
31:57
Speaker 1: Stephen Perry and Thomas barn of Us daft great name
32:03
Speaker 1: uh T b D actually uh invented the rubber band,
32:08
Speaker 1: the modern what we know is the rubber band because
32:09
Speaker 1: they started slicing these Uh. They had a rubber tube
32:12
Speaker 1: and started slicing these narrow rings from a vulcanized rubber tube.
32:16
Speaker 1: And they were like, here you go. It's called a
32:17
Speaker 1: rubber band. You can put it around your asparagus. Yeah,
32:21
Speaker 1: and everyone was super psyched except people who hate asparagus.
32:25
Speaker 1: That was a good one man. Uh. And today they
32:29
Speaker 1: still kind of do it in the same way. Um,
32:31
Speaker 1: rubber band wise, they create this, They make this latex
32:35
Speaker 1: together um with all these chemicals. It depends on, you know,
32:38
Speaker 1: what kind of rubber band you're making. And they get
32:40
Speaker 1: this raw rubber compound uh into a long hollow tube,
32:45
Speaker 1: slip it over a round pipe called the mandrill, expose
32:48
Speaker 1: that to high heat and pressure to vulcanize it, it
32:50
Speaker 1: cures it, and then they slice that up into rubber bands. Yep,
32:55
Speaker 1: pretty neat. It is pretty neat. You want to take
32:59
Speaker 1: a We can then talk some more about how it's made. Yeah,
33:05
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, so we've been talking about
33:35
Speaker 1: rubber um and its most natural form, and uh, how
33:40
Speaker 1: they transformed that into usable rubber is pretty remarkable. But
33:45
Speaker 1: immediately after World War Two, like we were talking about,
33:47
Speaker 1: this creation of synthetic rubber was probably the second biggest
33:51
Speaker 1: invention of all time. Well maybe not of all time.
33:56
Speaker 1: It's up there though, Yeah, but when it comes to
33:58
Speaker 1: stretchy things for sure. Yeah. And apparently the the World
34:02
Speaker 1: War two research and development produced not just one, but
34:06
Speaker 1: three different types of um easily manufactured synthetic rubbers. YEA.
34:12
Speaker 1: One was a beauty dyne rubber. Another was a styrene
34:15
Speaker 1: beauty dyne rubber, and that was the one that the
34:18
Speaker 1: government went with for World War two. Uh, and it
34:21
Speaker 1: was actually ripped off from a German from the Germans,
34:24
Speaker 1: which they had come up with something similar previously. And
34:28
Speaker 1: then there's an ethylene propylene monomer and all three of
34:32
Speaker 1: those make up most of today's synthetic rubbers. Yeah, and
34:36
Speaker 1: they found that this stuff worked really, really well, just
34:39
Speaker 1: as good as natural rubber had all that flex resistance. Um,
34:43
Speaker 1: it didn't deteriorate. Uh, eventually it would. Again I keep
34:48
Speaker 1: teasing like we're gonna get to that, which we will.
34:50
Speaker 1: But they found it was really well suited to replace
34:54
Speaker 1: rubber well in most applications, like an industrial application like
34:58
Speaker 1: a tire or a fan bell or some thing like that.
35:00
Speaker 1: But it didn't have that resilience that that natural rubber has.
35:06
Speaker 1: So there was an issue still, there was a kink
35:08
Speaker 1: that needed to be worked out. Well, yeah, as far
35:10
Speaker 1: as using adding textiles for sure, exactly, And they actually
35:14
Speaker 1: overcame it in nineteen fifty nine by day, I mean
35:16
Speaker 1: DuPont Corporation, who employed two chemists that got to work
35:20
Speaker 1: trying to crack this code, the final code of synthetic rubber,
35:26
Speaker 1: how to make it flexible and resilient, right, that's right.
35:30
Speaker 1: And they they started by using um a polymer, a
35:34
Speaker 1: polyurethane right, so, um, Well, we'll talk about polymers in
35:39
Speaker 1: a little bit, but basically they took a polymer, a
35:43
Speaker 1: eurothane based polymer, and watered it down and forced it
35:47
Speaker 1: through a plate with tiny little holes in it. And
35:50
Speaker 1: what came on the outside where these tiny little threads,
35:53
Speaker 1: and those tiny little threads were a magical creation known
35:58
Speaker 1: as Spandex, the trade name of which originally is micro. Yeah,
36:02
Speaker 1: it's amazing. And Spandex, they found had a lot of
36:05
Speaker 1: great applications. Namely, it could accept dies, so it wasn't
36:09
Speaker 1: just the sort of dull white color. You could make
36:12
Speaker 1: it any color you wanted to. Uh, and you could
36:15
Speaker 1: wash it. It It didn't absorb a lot of moisture, and
36:17
Speaker 1: it remained really stable when it was washed and dried,
36:20
Speaker 1: you know, kind of normal moderate temperatures. So hey, you
36:24
Speaker 1: can make this, weave it into clothing, throw it in
36:27
Speaker 1: the washer, diet whatever color you want, and you're good
36:30
Speaker 1: to go. And and most importantly, took it would snap back.
36:34
Speaker 1: It would retain its original shape after being stretched. So yes,
36:39
Speaker 1: spandex changed everything. I didn't realize it was from the fifties. Um.
36:44
Speaker 1: And William Harris makes a pretty good point. He he
36:47
Speaker 1: says that Spandex might be considered the modern elastic. Like
36:51
Speaker 1: it is, it's basically the base of of anything stretchy
36:54
Speaker 1: that you used today. Yeah, and it's said here, we
36:57
Speaker 1: said it's in all kinds of stuff. They said, it's
36:58
Speaker 1: in about of all clothing bought by Americans. So even
37:03
Speaker 1: if you don't think Spandex is in something, it may
37:05
Speaker 1: have a little Spandex in there. It's in of all
37:08
Speaker 1: clothing bought by Americans, of all spandex pants bought by Americans.
37:15
Speaker 1: Think about that staff for a little while. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah,
37:18
Speaker 1: including Jagging's. He points out he calls them pajama jeans,
37:21
Speaker 1: but I've always called him Jagging's. Oh is that the
37:25
Speaker 1: same thing? I believe? So yeah, interesting, we can hope.
37:30
Speaker 1: So Emily, when we put him on her daughter, she
37:33
Speaker 1: calls him jazzy pants. Oh yeah, that's a good one too.
37:36
Speaker 1: But that's just I think usually due to the pattern
37:38
Speaker 1: more than the snap back got you. Yeah, so we
37:43
Speaker 1: can sit here and procrastinate for several more minutes if
37:46
Speaker 1: you want, but ultimately we're gonna end up on the
37:49
Speaker 1: chemistry part. You realize, Yes, And because I uh don't
37:55
Speaker 1: understand chemistry at all, take it away. I'll get you
38:02
Speaker 1: for this, chuck. I'll throw in some words here and there.
38:05
Speaker 1: So I don't really know chemistry either, but I know
38:07
Speaker 1: both of us crammed on this, So forgive us all
38:10
Speaker 1: you chemists out there. If we get something wrong, let
38:13
Speaker 1: us know. But from what we understand, it's magic. Yeah,
38:17
Speaker 1: there you go the end. So, rubber, whether it's natural
38:21
Speaker 1: or synthetic, is a polymer, right, And it's a specific
38:26
Speaker 1: kind of polymer called an elastomer. It's an elastic polymer
38:30
Speaker 1: as stretchiness and resilience, it's flexible, right, And any kind
38:34
Speaker 1: of poll polymer is uh. Basically, if you look at
38:37
Speaker 1: the molecular structure of it, it's made up of these
38:40
Speaker 1: long repeating chains of the same unit over and over again.
38:44
Speaker 1: The units are called monitors, and depending on what the
38:46
Speaker 1: monitor is UM that leads to different kinds of polymers.
38:52
Speaker 1: And with elastomers in particular, if you look at some polymers,
38:56
Speaker 1: the structure is bulky and big and compact and and
39:00
Speaker 1: it's rigid and heavy and not flexible at all. Still,
39:04
Speaker 1: other kind of polymers, say like a plastic or a resin,
39:07
Speaker 1: are crystalline and structure and they fit so well together.
39:11
Speaker 1: They're also rigid and not very flexible either. Then you
39:15
Speaker 1: have elastomers, which are a kind of polymer, and because
39:18
Speaker 1: of their molecular structure, um, they are super flexible, super
39:23
Speaker 1: stretchy and they snap back into place. Yeah, and normally
39:27
Speaker 1: they're uh, I mean they liken it to this article
39:30
Speaker 1: like a coiled like a big massive snakes. But they
39:34
Speaker 1: have this really neat quality, these elastomers. When you apply
39:36
Speaker 1: force to it, the molecules actually straightened out in the
39:39
Speaker 1: direction that you're pulling it, and that's sort of the
39:42
Speaker 1: snap back you're talking about. But as soon as you
39:44
Speaker 1: release it, it goes back to that coiled up arrangement.
39:47
Speaker 1: Right when you pull it, when you apply force, they
39:50
Speaker 1: line up basically like those snakes, head to tail in
39:53
Speaker 1: one single long line. That's a scary snake. Yeah, And
39:56
Speaker 1: then when you release it, it goes back into its
39:58
Speaker 1: original form of that that coiled mass right. Perfect. Okay.
40:02
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why any kind of rubber, natural
40:04
Speaker 1: or synthetic is flexible. A flexible polymer is because it's
40:09
Speaker 1: um glass transition temperature is actually pretty low. Yeah, this
40:14
Speaker 1: is where I kind of just got foggy. So this
40:16
Speaker 1: is it's as simple as this, chuck. A glass transition temperature.
40:20
Speaker 1: It's not a melting point. A melting point is where
40:22
Speaker 1: the substance actually basically just turns into a liquid state.
40:26
Speaker 1: A disordered liquid state. The glass transition temperature doesn't affect
40:32
Speaker 1: the um, the the molecular makeup of the substance. Instead,
40:37
Speaker 1: it basically applies this property flexibility or rigidity. It's it's
40:43
Speaker 1: as simple as that, right, And so anything that has
40:46
Speaker 1: a low UM glass transition temperature relative to what we
40:51
Speaker 1: have is normal temperatures outside in in the world or
40:55
Speaker 1: in our homes or whatever, is going to be flexible
40:57
Speaker 1: and floppy. Anything with a high glass transition transition temperature
41:02
Speaker 1: UM is going to be rigid and and um hard
41:06
Speaker 1: and not flexible. So it's just suffice to say anything rubber,
41:11
Speaker 1: whether it's satural or synthetic, has a low glass transition temperature,
41:14
Speaker 1: so it's flexible under normal temperatures. But even if you
41:18
Speaker 1: if you took a UM a piece of rubber, natural rubber,
41:23
Speaker 1: and you applied, uh, you applied the temperature of negative
41:27
Speaker 1: seventy degrees celsius or negative ninety four degrees fair hight,
41:30
Speaker 1: it would crystallize. It's below the glass transition temperature, so
41:34
Speaker 1: it would just basically turn rigid and crystallize and ultimately
41:37
Speaker 1: would break apart. And that was part of the problem
41:40
Speaker 1: with those early pre vulcanized rubbers, they would fall apart.
41:44
Speaker 1: Because the glass transition temperature is not like an exact
41:48
Speaker 1: moment where the where the thing converts from flexible to rigid.
41:53
Speaker 1: It's it's the median of a large thermal window where
41:58
Speaker 1: it starts to get get crystalline and rigid, and then
42:02
Speaker 1: it's completely crystalline and rigid on the other end. So
42:05
Speaker 1: of course you would think, you know, if you get
42:07
Speaker 1: down to say twenty degrees like it would in Boston
42:11
Speaker 1: or New York in the nineteenth century, and you're walking
42:13
Speaker 1: around with rubber soled shoes, they're going to crystallize and
42:16
Speaker 1: break off. That's what's going on. It all has to
42:19
Speaker 1: do with the glass transition temperature. Okay, So during valkanization,
42:23
Speaker 1: they heat that up with sulfur, and that makes those
42:26
Speaker 1: polymer chains linked together with sulfur atoms. I guess that's
42:29
Speaker 1: like almost like a glue. Yeah, Like it's like a
42:33
Speaker 1: molecular glue from what I understand. Yeah, okay, that makes
42:36
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. Yea. So so even when you
42:38
Speaker 1: apply intense heat um or extreme cold, it will um
42:43
Speaker 1: maintain its molecular shape. Yeah. But here's the thing I've
42:46
Speaker 1: been talking about why your elastic band doesn't last forever
42:49
Speaker 1: and why your socks will eventually be around your ankles.
42:52
Speaker 1: Um this elastic eventually will lose that snap back due
42:56
Speaker 1: to oxid oxidization, oxidization oxidation, I like oxidization uh natural rubber.
43:04
Speaker 1: This oxygen and in particular ozone is going to start
43:07
Speaker 1: breaking those bonds within just days. So it happens pretty quickly,
43:12
Speaker 1: and that's why we heat and treat rubber like we do.
43:15
Speaker 1: But even still over time, uh that ozone and combine
43:20
Speaker 1: that with light uh uv radiation, it's another culprit. That's
43:24
Speaker 1: what's gonna cause that to eventually break down over time.
43:26
Speaker 1: That would make sense because with vulcanization, what you're doing
43:30
Speaker 1: is adding sulfur to the polymer, right yeah, And if
43:36
Speaker 1: it would it would make sense then that either um
43:40
Speaker 1: uv radiation or something else could break those bonds between
43:43
Speaker 1: the sulfur and the other the other ingredients and then
43:46
Speaker 1: they would be replaced by oxygen, so oxidation would take place,
43:50
Speaker 1: right yeah. So it's pretty much ozone UV radiation and
43:53
Speaker 1: then cold actually does make a difference. It's not gonna
43:56
Speaker 1: hold up quite as well in cold weather. Like if
43:58
Speaker 1: you take if you take a pair of underwear out
44:01
Speaker 1: and like, you know, negative twenty degrees in Minnesota and
44:06
Speaker 1: you start really stretching it out a lot, it's gonna, uh,
44:09
Speaker 1: it's gonna lose its elasticity really fast. Anybody from Minnesota
44:14
Speaker 1: can tell you that. Yeah, I mean, who know, they
44:16
Speaker 1: may have to buy more underwear than like Hawaii. I
44:20
Speaker 1: have no idea they all wear Union suits up there.
44:22
Speaker 1: Now that's true. So, um, do you want to finish
44:26
Speaker 1: with Pat Benatar? Oh? Man, let's bring her out? Okay,
44:31
Speaker 1: come on, Bat, It's gonna do an acoustic set that Man,
44:34
Speaker 1: how great would that be? So? Um, we did a
44:38
Speaker 1: little digging and we were trying to figure out who
44:41
Speaker 1: basically started the eighties spandex rocker trend, the rocker spandex trend.
44:48
Speaker 1: She was the first thing that came to my mind. Yeah,
44:51
Speaker 1: I just didn't know exactly how I I would have
44:54
Speaker 1: guessed it went back beyond Pat Benatar. And then I
44:56
Speaker 1: found out that Pat Benatar has been a musician for
44:59
Speaker 1: much longer than I realized. But um, apparently the whole
45:03
Speaker 1: thing happened on Halloween of nine seven, and by this
45:08
Speaker 1: time Pat Benatar was already like a pretty regular fixture
45:11
Speaker 1: on the New York City club circuit, and so she
45:14
Speaker 1: dressed up as a character from Catwomen of the Moon.
45:18
Speaker 1: Have you seen that movie? I haven't either, but apparently
45:21
Speaker 1: cat Women on the Moon is a cult classic sci
45:24
Speaker 1: fi movie, and I guess they wear a lot of spandex.
45:27
Speaker 1: So she dressed up in some spandex get up and
45:30
Speaker 1: decided to play a show that night at Catch a
45:33
Speaker 1: Rising Star, which is basically her house club in there. No,
45:37
Speaker 1: I haven't either. Is it still around? I don't know,
45:40
Speaker 1: is it? I think I know of it from like
45:42
Speaker 1: Comedy Central in the nineties. Yeah, I think that was
45:45
Speaker 1: the name of a show, but I think it was
45:48
Speaker 1: from that club. Yeah, I think so. I could be wrong,
45:52
Speaker 1: but anyway, she she was used to playing shows there,
45:54
Speaker 1: but she played the show in this get up, the
45:57
Speaker 1: spandex get up, and noticed that the crowd was like
45:59
Speaker 1: into it lot more than usual, and then they said, wow,
46:03
Speaker 1: we wow, what's she wearing? Pretty much, it was about
46:06
Speaker 1: as simple as that. She um. She was like, Okay,
46:09
Speaker 1: let's let me try this. I want to do a
46:11
Speaker 1: little experiment, and um, I'm gonna do this again, but
46:15
Speaker 1: not on Halloween. I'm gonna dress up again and do
46:18
Speaker 1: the same show, and she didn't. Got another response like
46:21
Speaker 1: way better than usual response, and she's like, that's it.
46:23
Speaker 1: I'm doing spandex from now on. And that was that.
46:28
Speaker 1: Seven Pat Benatar starts the eighties bandex Rocker trend. I
46:33
Speaker 1: would count that as the fourth dinner party factoid. Yeah,
46:37
Speaker 1: I would say so too. And if you want a
46:38
Speaker 1: fifth Catachizing Star is a chain of comedy clubs and
46:43
Speaker 1: was also a TV series in Canada. To now you
46:48
Speaker 1: got anything else? Uh no, let's say for elastic everybody.
46:53
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about it, type that
46:55
Speaker 1: word into the search bar how stuff works dot com
46:59
Speaker 1: and who knows, amazing things will come up. That's right.
47:02
Speaker 1: And since I said search far as time for a
47:03
Speaker 1: listener mate, Ah yeah, I'm gonna call this um short,
47:09
Speaker 1: but it's kind of funny. Hey guys, quick and trivial
47:13
Speaker 1: email from a fan in Pittsburgh. I too appreciated. Uh
47:17
Speaker 1: in your U is the episode on Body Snatching, live
47:22
Speaker 1: episode on Grave Robbing. I to appreciate it. How cool.
47:25
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin's Body Robbers partner's name was Gancho Genev And
47:31
Speaker 1: I tell you we did that shoke a few times,
47:34
Speaker 1: and you and I never ceased to not crack up
47:36
Speaker 1: at the words gantcho Ganev. It's still happening being Jewish.
47:41
Speaker 1: I thought a little Hebrew Yiddish languages were involved, and
47:45
Speaker 1: Genev in fact does mean thief. Oh really and uh.
47:50
Speaker 1: Then he stretches it a bit. Then he says, Gancho
47:53
Speaker 1: for that matter, seems to be Spanish for hook like
47:56
Speaker 1: dance moves. And he said, Charlie Chaplin was a d answer.
48:00
Speaker 1: He said, so, maybe that's a stretch on the second part,
48:02
Speaker 1: but it seems as though Gancho Genev was born just
48:05
Speaker 1: the old Charlie Chaplin's body. I'll give you props on
48:09
Speaker 1: the u Genev part at least, and that is from B. D. Wahlberg,
48:14
Speaker 1: and he said, ps, you might remember me from Pittsburgh
48:17
Speaker 1: at your live show. I asked a question in the
48:21
Speaker 1: Q and A about how you find new ways to
48:23
Speaker 1: rip on the post office. And I still remember I
48:26
Speaker 1: gave my Trader Joe's bag to somebody in the audience
48:31
Speaker 1: and that was b D. He still still have Chuck's
48:34
Speaker 1: Trader Joe's bag hanging in my kitchen. Nice man, Well,
48:37
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, b d we appreciate it. That was
48:41
Speaker 1: it would have been even more ironic had he been
48:43
Speaker 1: referencing the DV Cooper episode. Oh did you hear about
48:46
Speaker 1: the new info? I did, and it actually makes a
48:48
Speaker 1: lot of sense to me. Yeah, So for anyone that
48:51
Speaker 1: hasn't seen they found some actual new science that uh
48:56
Speaker 1: seems to indicate. They found these four elements in the
48:59
Speaker 1: tie that B D D B Cooper war. And apparently
49:03
Speaker 1: these elements are very specific to work being done by
49:07
Speaker 1: the Boeing company yea, So it gives a lot of
49:11
Speaker 1: credence to the theory that he was a Boeing employee
49:14
Speaker 1: and and even more specifically because it was on his tie,
49:17
Speaker 1: if he were like working the actual machines that were
49:20
Speaker 1: manufacturing was this thing he would he would have been
49:23
Speaker 1: wearing like coveralls or something, not a tie. So it
49:25
Speaker 1: indicates that he if he worked for Bowing, he would
49:27
Speaker 1: have been like an engineer or a manager who would
49:30
Speaker 1: have been wearing a tie on the floor while he
49:32
Speaker 1: was out there. Like, I think this is like the
49:34
Speaker 1: biggest lead they've ever had. I think so too, pretty amazing. Yeah,
49:38
Speaker 1: you know who's excited about it? Secret boy? Uh, if
49:43
Speaker 1: you want to know we're talking about. We did a
49:45
Speaker 1: DV Cooper episode and this popped in right, it's a
49:48
Speaker 1: live episode that we hope will be uh available to
49:52
Speaker 1: you soon. What else? Oh? And actually, wow, boy, this
49:57
Speaker 1: is exciting. We just got literally an email reply from
50:00
Speaker 1: b D because I said we were gonna be reading
50:03
Speaker 1: this and I think this bears mentioning. What a daymaker. Guys,
50:08
Speaker 1: if you use a pronoun for me, I go by
50:10
Speaker 1: they and them rather than he or she. I know
50:13
Speaker 1: you're talking about because I am non by non binary listener.
50:17
Speaker 1: What up? What up? B D? Thank you. It's good
50:20
Speaker 1: to hear from you, and I'd love to surprise my
50:22
Speaker 1: BFF Carlyle with a great big audio high five. Well
50:26
Speaker 1: I think that just happened. Wow, all right, this is
50:28
Speaker 1: like real time correction slash back and forth with BED.
50:33
Speaker 1: Let's just see what happened email obamba, real quick. We'll
50:36
Speaker 1: sit here, let's see what happens next. We're just gonna
50:39
Speaker 1: take this for for We're gonna take this ride, all right. Well,
50:42
Speaker 1: thank you, b D. Yeah, thanks a lot. Be good
50:44
Speaker 1: to hear from you. All right, Well, if you want
50:46
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, you can tweet to
50:48
Speaker 1: us I'm at Josh Underscore, UM Underscore Clark UH. You
50:52
Speaker 1: can also hit me up at the official s y
50:55
Speaker 1: s K podcast handle. You can hang out with Chuck
50:58
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck and at stuff you
51:01
Speaker 1: Should Know U. You can send us both an email
51:03
Speaker 1: to stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
51:06
Speaker 1: has always joined us out our home on the web,
51:08
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
51:15
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works
51:18
Speaker 1: dot com