Rubber elasticityRubber elasticity refers to a property of crosslinked rubber: it can be stretched by up to a factor of 10 from its original length and, when released, returns very nearly to its original length. This can be repeated many times with no apparent degradation to the rubber. Rubber is a member of a larger class of materials called elastomers and it is difficult to overestimate their economic and technological importance. Elastomers have played a key role in the development of new technologies in the 20th century and make a substantial contribution to the global economy.
Spontaneous processIn thermodynamics, a spontaneous process is a process which occurs without any external input to the system. A more technical definition is the time-evolution of a system in which it releases free energy and it moves to a lower, more thermodynamically stable energy state (closer to thermodynamic equilibrium). The sign convention for free energy change follows the general convention for thermodynamic measurements, in which a release of free energy from the system corresponds to a negative change in the free energy of the system and a positive change in the free energy of the surroundings.
Reversible process (thermodynamics)In thermodynamics, a reversible process is a process, involving a system and its surroundings, whose direction can be reversed by infinitesimal changes in some properties of the surroundings, such as pressure or temperature. Throughout an entire reversible process, the system is in thermodynamic equilibrium, both physical and chemical, and nearly in pressure and temperature equilibrium with its surroundings. This prevents unbalanced forces and acceleration of moving system boundaries, which in turn avoids friction and other dissipation.
CrystallizationCrystallization is the process by which solid forms, where the atoms or molecules are highly organized into a structure known as a crystal. Some ways by which crystals form are precipitating from a solution, freezing, or more rarely deposition directly from a gas. Attributes of the resulting crystal depend largely on factors such as temperature, air pressure, and in the case of liquid crystals, time of fluid evaporation. Crystallization occurs in two major steps.
Entropic forceIn physics, an entropic force acting in a system is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the entire system's statistical tendency to increase its entropy, rather than from a particular underlying force on the atomic scale. In the canonical ensemble, the entropic force associated to a macrostate partition is given by where is the temperature, is the entropy associated to the macrostate , and is the present macrostate.
