Robert Hooke the forerunner of polymer rheology

Although rheology is not a concept applicable only to plastics and, therefore, to the world of polymers, but also spaces in the pharmaceutical, food, rubber and ceramic sectors, rheology applied to plastic polymers has an important component in everyday applications.

It is evident that in 1678 there were no plastic polymers, but history has taught us to treasure the studies and discoveries that brilliant men, like Robert Hooke, have made in their lives and that, the scientific conclusions they have experienced, such as Hook's law, inherent to the elastic behavior of raw materials, still accompany us today.

Robert Hook was born on 18 July 1635 in England near Freshwater, Isle of Wight, from a family of humble origins, where his father practiced his profession as curate of the local parish.

In poor health he proved very inclined to painting so much so that, in 1648, on the death of his father, he moved to London and went to work as an apprentice at the workshop by the painter Peter Lely, still attending the school that took him to Oxford University in 1653.

In 1662 he was hired to the Royal Society with a new role for the time, as he was the first scientist to perform technical experiments with a regular employment contract. In his job description there was the task of carrying out weekly scientific experiments to be shown during the meetings of the members of the Royal Society.

His research and experimentation brought him to the top of the scientific society in which he worked, but he attracted envy and differences from other scientists, one of these was Newton.

Among the many scientific activities carried out, he demonstrated the elastic behavior of matter, coining a set of theories that are contained in Hook's law, named after him.

In 1678 Hook came to demonstrate that an elastic body, such as a spring, undergoes a deformation directly proportional to the force applied to it.

Over the next few years many scientists worked, improved and experimented with new concepts on the elastic behavior of matter, such as Newton's law on viscosity in 1687, the concept of viscoelasticity by James Clerk Maxwell in 1868, the effect of compound stresses of materials by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1878, up to 1920 when the rheology society was founded by scientists Eugene C. Bingham, Wolfgang Ostwald, Ludwig Prandtl and Markus Reiner.

In today's world of virgin and recycled polymers rheological behaviors are of primary importance in order to create correct recipes, to transform raw materials through molding, extrusion , blowing, thermoforming and to create appreciable articles from both an aesthetic and a mechanical point of view.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.