Charles Goodyear and rubber history and science lesson

Hi, this is Future Ticia 2025, and I’m updating this absolutely ancient history lesson about Charles Goodyear and the invention of rubber. He is in the tailend of the first industrial revolution, when we got one of those rapid onsets of technology that changed the way of life for everyone. The funny thing is, I wrote this as a science lesson; it’s a good chemistry lesson (I have no chemistry lesson landing page, note to self make that). Now back to past Ticia 2011

(there are affiliate links in here)

Our original Charles Goodyear and the invention of Rubber lesson

We read the book “So You Want to be an Inventor.” It’s a great story that tells about different inventors and the various ways they work.
For me, the great joy was finding all of these different inventors in different places.  I was very surprised to find out Goodyear (I’ll go back and get his first name) was from Connecticut; I would have thought Michigan.  He’s a great lesson in persistence.  He spent over 10 years and most of his money, finally going broke before he figured out how to vulcanize rubber so it could be made into the many different things we use it for now.

And here’s where I remembered Christy from Superheroes and Princesses had done an experiment with Borax and glue to make bouncy balls, while not rubber, it’s still similar enough. {edited to add, Superheroes and Princesses has since gone private, so I’m adding the instructions to the end of the blog post.}

Well, we started working and mixing, and I got a few steps wrong in the mixing.

And then the problems really set in.  I let the kids measure the ingredients, and I think they didn’t add quite enough cornstarch.  It was a hugely sticky mess.  Out of 10 kids, and my sampl,e I think we got maybe 2 functional ones.  So, instead of being a neat lesson about how cool this pseudo-bouncy ball is, it became a lesson in perseverance and how experiments don’t always work out……..  Oops.

It was still an enjoyable lesson.  It just didn’t work out how I thought it would.

I’m hoping someone had a successful science lesson this week.  This particular one was not as successful as we’d hoped.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 tsp Borax powder
• food coloring
• 1 TBSP glue
• 1 TBSP cornstarch
• 2 disposable cups

1. Pour 2 TBSP warm water and 1/2 tsp Borax powder into a disposable cup
2. Stir until the powder is dissolved (may take some time)
3. Pour 1 TBSP glue (we used regular Elmer’s glue) into a separate disposable cup
4. Add 1/2 tsp of the borax solution you made to the cup with the glue – do not stir
5. Add 1 TBSP cornstarch to the glue/borax solution – do not stir
6. Allow the ingredients to interact on their own for 15 seconds, and then stir to fully mix the ingredients (this is part of where we went wrong)
7. Once it is impossible to stir, take it out of the cup and mold it with your hands
8. It starts out sticky and messy, but solidifies as you knead it
9. Once the ball is less sticky, you can bounce it.
10. Store it in a sealed plastic bag

More Resources to learn about Charles Goodyear

Okay, so that was how we learned about him back then. Now, let me give you some more information to learn about him.

First, one of the many Simon Whistler channels to learn about him:

Then, Charles Goodyear’s native state of Connecticut is quite proud of him, for good reason, and so they have a nice little biography of him: Charles Goodyear.

And for one final bit of information, let me give you an article from Make magazine about the vulcanization of rubber, which is what he worked on for so long.

More lessons from chemistry or the Industrial Revolution

I apparently have a tag for the Industrial Revolution.

• How to make fake snow
• Sharpie Fireworks (Chromatography)
• Wright brothers achieve first powered flight 1903
• Thomas Edison