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drewprops
Space Pirate
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Atlanta
 
2006-09-14, 14:22

Have you art students out there ever wondered how in the hell these things work?



Kneaded erasers are usually resilient pieces of rubber that you use as an eraser/blending tool when working with graphite, pastels and other dusty deposit-laying instruments of art on sheets of paper. If you're using a soft lead the kneaded eraser can quickly become a shiny black lump of coal but then the miracle! You grab the thing and stretch it until it stretches and snaps in half. You jam the two pieces on top of each other and pull them apart with a snap again. Done a few dozen times the kneaded eraser is once again "clean" looking and ready for more action. The tiny particles of graphite have been 'snapped' out into the air during this stretch-snap exercise.

But now, the best part of all: as the eraser gets stretched apart it becomes indescribably soft... and I mean that. It's like the softest thing you've ever held in your hands. You can see the individual stretched tufts of material as they fall apart and away from each other. It's like a billion little atoms have been disassociated in the pulling. The once rubbery material has become soft and friable.

I know that some of you guy are in bio out there, what gives???

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