And that in turn is because rubber is so fantastically useful.
Useful things made of rubber.
Apart from widely popular items like rubber erasure tyres o rings hot water rubber pads rubber bends rubber tubes or a garden rubber hose there are more than 40 000 known products made out of rubber or rubber composite being manufactured and u.
Many people don t realize that commonly used materials such as rubber come from trees.
Rubber is sourced from the rubber tree through tapping the tree for its sap which is known as latex.
Today automobile tires are made up of 50 natural rubber and tires used for aircraft are made out of 100 natural rubber.
The rubber tree which is native to the rainforests of the amazon can be tapped for latex once it reaches approximately six years of age.
Now rubber products are just as likely to be made artificially in chemical plants.
In 1770 british chemist joseph priestley noticed that rubber was very good for removing pencil marks on paper.
That s largely because we can t produce enough natural rubber to meet all our needs.
Natural rubber melts in heat and freeze in the cold.
Even though most people believe that rubber s first uses appeared in 19th century europe scientists discovered that in 1600 b c ancient mesoamericans added the juice from morning glory species ipomoea alba to natural latex from the castilla elastica tree to make rubber balls elasticized bindings and hollow.