Facts you should know about The world's largest rubber company offers scientists unique opportunities. In Synthetic Rubber Research, your activities would range from fundamentals to product improvement work—with research that covers a wide range of synthetic rubbers— polyisoprene, polybutadiene, polyurethane, butadienestyrene, condensation rubbers, reactive rubbers, stereospecific rubbers, and others that are still confidential. You might search for catalysts which give precisely known spatial configurations in stereospecific polymers. Or study emulsion vs. solution systems for their commercial potential. In Organic Chemical Research, you'd start in one of four sections: polymerizable monomers, rubber chemicals, organic process research, and bench-scale process research. Working through basic organic research, you'd help keep your department abreast of new data on all essential rubber industry chemicals. And with the bench-scale approach, you'd see your discoveries go into production fast. For example, the Goodyear isoprene plant in Beaumont, Texas, was built directly from bench-scale models without an intermediate pilot-plant stage. In New Products Research, you could cover new developments that might be of potential use to Goodyear. Like friction materials for braking systems. Or new radioisotopic tracer systems. Or the detection of free radicals by electron spin resonance. This was the group that produced the first Beta ray thickness gauge in the U.S.—to control the thickness of films. They also developed a novel use of iodine-125 as an accurate way to measure tire wear after as little as 100 miles of driving. Many of the department's innovations have led to widely accepted testing methods, like the Goodyear Vibrotester to determine dynamic properties of rubber compositions, the Gehman Low Temperature Tester, and the Mallory Fabric Fatigue Test. In Rubber and Plastics Applications Research, your work would form the critical link between the development of a new polymer and its commercial end product. You might evaluate new rubbers and plastics for their product potential, refine processes, study cellular 54A
C&EN
products like latex and urethane foams, or explore new PVC copolymers. This department is constantly finding new applications for ABS plastics. And a section has recently been established to develop improved materials for car safety items like crash pads, and better ways of making them. In Research Analytical Services, you would conduct chemical and structural analyses of materials being investigated by all the other departments. And you'd have some of the most sophisticated equipment in the world to work with. The computerized mass spectrometer could save you 99% of the time you'd need for conventional, wet chemical analysis methods. With gas-liquid chromatography, for instance, you could identify even cis- and trans-isomers of mono-olefins. The department also needs experts for such tools as ESR and NMR spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, and electron microscopy. In Polyester Research, the keynote is growth. Goodyear's first production facility was completed in September 1959. Subsequent expansions, including one currently underway, will boost original capacity by a factor of five. One of the results of this dynamic growth is the unusually promising career opportunities provided for chemists, physicists, and engineers. Assignments range from studies of reaction kinetics to process improvement or cost reduction. As applications for polyester products continue to grow, broad new areas for study continue to unfold. Polyesters are already well established in textiles, hot-melt adhesives, laminating films, insulation and protective coatings, but further exploration and development in these and other areas must accompany continued growth. A recent practical result of these studies is Vytacord,® a polyester tire cord that's superior to both nylon and rayon in many applications. Working in polyesters, you'd have the most modern equipment in the industry available to you. Here's just one example. If you needed physicals for a new polyester under study, a data processing system would help give you the answers—almost instantly.
The rubber and polymer research capital Akron is a quiet, residential city that boasts 70 parks, (ADVERTISEMENT)
