17 May: Rubber Band Day

It's Rubber Band Day! A day, apparently, to celebrate another of those humble items we take for granted around the house.

1. Alternative names for a rubber band are binder, elastic band, lackey band, laggy band or gum band.
2. Aztecs and Mayans used a form of rubber band as early as 1600 B.C.
3. The rubber band as we know it today was patented in England on March 17, 1845 by Stephen Perry.
4. Many rubber products are made from synthetic rubber, but not the rubber band. They are still made from natural rubber because of its elasticity. The rubber is mixed with sulphur, which initiates the vulcanisation process. This stabilises and strengthens the rubber so it does not become brittle at cold temperatures. The rubber is heated to 260 degrees C then rolled out like pie dough into sheets. The sheets are made into tubes; the tubes are cut very thin to produce the rubber bands.
5. They come in a variety of sizes. A rubber band has three basic dimensions: length, width, and thickness. For marketing purposes, the sizes are given numbers. Rubber bands numbered 8-19 are 1/16 inch wide, with lengths from 7/8 inch to 31⁄2 inches. Rubber band numbers 30-34 are 1/8 inch wide. For bands longer than 32 inches, numbers are above 100, again starting at width 1/16 inch.
6. The physics bit. Rubber has an unusual property in that heating causes the rubber band to contract, and cooling causes expansion. When a rubber band is stretched, it releases heat, which is why, if you stretch one and place it against your lips, it feels warm. Releasing it after it has been stretched will make it absorb heat, causing its surroundings to become cooler.
7. In the UK, the largest user of rubber bands is probably Royal Mail. They use nearly 1 billion rubber bands a year to tie together bundles of letters at sorting offices - that's one rubber band being used for every 28 letters. This caused a littering problem around 2004 as posties had a tendency to drop them as they delivered the letters. The Royal Mail's solution was to make their rubber bands red, so if someone dropped one, they'd be more likely to spot it and pick it up. Since 2010 they have reverted back to brown ones.
8. Animals have reason to hate rubber bands. As well as small animals like Hedgehogs getting their heads stuck in them, they are used by farmers for castration. They use a rubber band to cut off the Blood supply to an animal's testicles so that they atrophy and drop off.
9. Other uses for rubber bands include: Guitar strings, Hair bands, bungee jumps for Teddy bears, Bracelets, Bicycle clips, Pencil-top erasers, Waistband expanders, Anti-slip devices for mixing spoons, Saucepan handle covers, Jar openers, an aide memoire, to barter for stamps (good luck with that), Gardening string and of course, powering small free-flight model aeroplanes.
10. Joel Waul, from Florida, spent six years constructing the world's largest rubber band ball. The ball stands 6 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs in at 9,032 pounds, twice as big as the previous record holder. Eventually, his neighbours got fed up of it standing in his driveway (it was allegedly very smelly as well as being an eyesore) so Joel had to get rid of it. He found a willing new owner in Ripley's Believe It Or Not, who already owned the largest string and barbed-wire balls. "This is now my holy trinity, I guess," said Ripley's Vice President Edward Meyer. They had to use a crane to take it away.