CycleBanter.com - View Single Post - Elmer's Rubber Cement is not the vulcanizing kind!

**Michael Press** · April 27th 09, 12:18 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc,rec.bicycles.tech

In article ,
(Tom Keats) wrote:

Now I'm wondering
how those long polymers find their ways into their holes
or ruts or whatever allows them to interdigitate -- do
they just fall in when a hole opens up beneath them,
or do they just randomly flow around until they drop
into a hole/rut/whatever? If they're electrically drawn
in, could that arguably be a chemical process?

Physically it is similar to interleaving the pages of
two books. The force to pull them apart is enormous.
It is not a chemical process because chemical bonds
are not changed. Very roughly, a chemical bond changes
when one or more electrons move permanently
from one orbit to another.

Vulcanizing rubber is a one way street chemically.
Rubber is melted with sulfur whence cross links form
between polymers. This cross linking cannot be undone
to get back to the original constituents.

--
Michael Press