vulcanize

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The Word of the Day for March 26 is:

vulcanize   \VUL-kuh-nyze\   verb
     : to treat rubber or rubberlike material chemically to give useful 
properties (as elasticity or strength) 

Example sentence: 
     The American inventor Charles Goodyear is said to have discovered how to 
vulcanize rubber quite accidentally.

Did you know? 
     "Vulcanize" sounds like something Spock from _Star Trek_ might do, but the 
explanation behind this word has more to do with ancient mythology than it does 
with science fiction. Vulcanization involves heating rubber in combination with 
sulfur. The Roman god Vulcan (whose Greek counterpart is Hephaestus) was the 
god of fire and of skills that used fire, such as metalworking. So when Charles 
Goodyear discovered that high heat would result in stronger rubber, he called 
the process "vulcanization" after the god of fire. Goodyear stumbled upon the 
idea in 1839 and acquired a patent for it in 1844, but the labels "vulcanize" 
and "vulcanization" didn't appear in print until 1846.





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