What is rubber made from?
Natural rubber is made from the sap of the wild rubber tree. The bark of the tree is ‘tapped’, this means cutting small slits into the bark, so that the white sap, known as latex, drips out and is caught in collecting cups. In the past, an acid was added to the latex to make the sap set like a jelly. The latex jelly was then flattened and rolled into sheets and hung out to dry by workers. A way of making rubber stronger and more elastic was invented by and Charles Goodyear in 1839. His method was called vulcanising and it stopped rubber from perishing. Liquid latex is now shipped to factories where the rubber is made by machines. It can be cloured and made into car tyres, gloves, hoses, balloons and many other things. Rubber trees are native to tropical parts of South America and until the 1870’s most rubber came from Brazil and other parts of South America. In Sir Henry Wickham took some seeds to England and grew seedlings.
#Rubber is a elastic substance obtained from the exudations of certain tropical plants (natural rubber) or derived from petroleum and natural gas (synthetic rubber). #Natural rubber is an elastic hydrocarbon polymer that naturally occurs as a milky colloidal suspension, or latex, in the sap of some plants. It can also be synthesized. #Whilst most rubber is now synthesised from petroleum, around one-quarter of the world’s rubber comes from a natural source a tropical tree known as Hevea brasiliensis, which is native to the tropical Americas. H. brasiliensis grows best at temperatures of 21-28 degrees, in areas with an annual rainfall of just under 2000mm. These features, and its preferred altitude of around 600 metres mean that its prime growing area is around 10 degrees on either side of the equator, although it is also cultivated further north in China, Mexico, and Guatemala.
