Saturday, October 09, 2010

Rubber Trees


Who knew that the raw material for rubber was this thin white liquid dripping out of slender trees? Our guide for the day in Ho Chi Minh made a quick stop to let us check out this grove of rubber trees. The bark is carved away in a spiral around the tree, and a small metal trough is a attached at the bottom of the spiral to allow the "rubber" to drip into a collection bowl. I can't imagine what the process is for turning this white liquid into tires, can you?

Seth, Gwen, and friends check out the bowl of "rubber".

I was amazed to think about the fact that God filled the world with natural resources like this for man to discover and figure out how to utilize.

3 comments:

Sarah Jane said...

We were just looking at a book that talked about this - cool!

Mary and Justin said...

How cool!

Anonymous said...

I'm reading back a bit - but i have to tell you that there was an imitation set-up at Goodyear headquarters "World of Rubber Museum" that looked just like this!! They closed the museum a year or two ago, but Wendy and i used to take the kids there. Lance and Camille are young stockholders and needed to see how where it all begins :).