Talk:Elastomer/Archive 1

Crosslinked liquid

In a Mechanics of Materials course, my professor described elastomers as “crosslinked liquids”. That is, that they are liquid polymers but with just enough cross-links to prevent plastic deformation, but few enough to allow large deformation. Is this an accurate description? If so, does the glass transition temperature correspond to the freezing temperature of the liquid were it not crosslinked? ―BenFrantzDale 02:44, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Not all elastomers derive from liquid polymers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 159.235.52.252 (talk • contribs).

Consumer products

I've removed the entire consumer products section (and the recently-inserted question that went along with it). If we started to list all, or even a representative sample of consumer products that use elastomers, the list would be far too long for this article. A better approach might be to find one example for each of the listed elastomers and add that to the elastomer's "bullet". Atlant 16:49, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Latex

Where does Latex fit into this? Shouldn't it be referenced in the article? --George100 12:06, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Latex is NOT an elastomer. It is a precompound for elastomers as it becomes rubber when it is cured with sulfur (vulcanized). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 159.235.52.252 (talk • contribs).

Even though this comment is old, Just to nitpick, natural latex does not need to be vulcanized to become an elastomer. As the water evaporates, Natural (liquid) latex falls out of the state of being in an aqueous solution, and crosslinks on it's own. However according to polymer science, once this happens, it is no longer "latex" but instead becomes "natural rubber", which is indeed an elastomer. It's a good question, because many of these terms are used interchangeably in colloquial English, and have different meanings in different contexts. As a result the scope of the wikipedia articles is also a bit confusing. I'm working on fixing this... -Verdatum (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Neither of these comments is correct. Latex is the term for the naturally produced dispersion of natural rubber found in the sap of the rubber tree. It has also been used colloquially for aqueous dispersions of synthetic rubber. When natural rubber latex is dried or coagulated, one obtains natural rubber. This may lightly crosslink due to air oxidation. However, it will still need to be vulcanized for practical use. For dipped goods like gloves, natural rubber latex is still mixed with aqueous dispersions of vulcanizing chemicals and the mixture cured.

Elastomers are rubbery polymers, but not necessarily crosslinked. But in practice most applications require vulcanization, the formation of chemical crosslinks. Delmlsfan (talk) 23:20, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Picture

This article could do with a cross-linked polymer picture. ―BenFrantzDale 02:44, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

The picture already in the article is real quality. I think there is an unwritten rule WP: MSPaint is not acceptable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.178.155.128 (talk) 01:55, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Viscoelasticity

As a physicist I'm not familiar with all conventions in chemistry. Though, from a physics point of view the article suggest that elastomers are elastic, which is used in physics when the loading cycles is non-hysteric. In the case of elastomers the deformation behaviour should be called viscoelastic, since most elastomers do show hysteresis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.125.16.57 (talk) 08:55, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

You are correct by the technical definitions of elastic and viscoelastic and the nearly universal presence of hysteresis. From colloquial use, however, rubber is frequently described as being elastic in nature. Cdewing1 (talk) 19:30, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

It sounds new to me to define elastomers as polymers exhibiting viscoelasticity. All polymers, thermoplastics and thermosets also show such properties and this is just a issue with the experimental timescale and the response time of polymer chains. The special part about elastomers is that they are crosslinked networks and generally show significant rubbery plateau.--128.138.65.144 (talk) 03:28, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Use in clothing

It's clear in this article that elastomers are used to strengthen various materials/polymers, but what about clothing? From looking around, I got the impression elastomers were used very heavily to fortify acrylic and nylon garments. Is that correct? Either way it should be mentioned in the article. The term "acrylic" as applied to threads/clothing is quite ambiguous, and this might help to clarify what all it means. Koyae (talk) 07:31, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

I would recommend we create a separate article on Elastic (textile) for the item used in sewing and clothing construction, and remove the clothing template from this article. I'll put that on my mental to-do list. - PKM (talk) 05:25, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Elastic bands gone bad

I never fully read an article on why elastic bands go all gooey and break when put in a pot of coins, if i had, i could now add to the article a section on the mechanisms of elastic breakdown, which would have been useful for others too. Anyone able to explain some basics ?? 80.42.201.13 (talk) 12:22, 22 April 2011 (UTC)