Charles Goodyear vulcanization and Mayan rubber crosslinking

Used as a deep analogy for PEX crosslinking. Goodyear's 1830s sulfur-latex patent; Mike Tarkanian's MIT bachelor's thesis on Mayan use of morning glory vine for natural sulfur crosslinking thousands of years earlier.

Remember Charles Goodyear and sulfur and putting it in latex and making rubber? That's how he learned how to make rubber in the 1830s, by putting sulfur in with the latex, and the sulfur would create crosslinks between the long polymer chains. I'm not getting a lot of nods here of remembering Charles. Charles Goodyear got a patent on it, but that's because he didn't know that the ancient Mayans actually used a vine that had natural sulfur compounds. They would mix that, and so their rubber ball — they used to play this game over miles and miles with this rubber ball. Mike Tarkanian, who runs the lab over here, for his bachelor's thesis was the one who rediscovered the fact that the Mayans from thousands of years ago used the morning glory vine, a type of morning glory that had natural sulfur compounds. They mix it with the rubber and they get crosslinking.