Difference Between Adhesives & Glue
Nails and strings are great for affixing objects, but there is nothing quite as clean and unobtrusive as glues and adhesives. People use these two words pretty much interchangeably, but there are some specific technical differences and some subtle functional differences between the two.
Other People Are Reading
-
Technical Differences
-
Technically, the difference between a glue and an adhesive is the difference between natural and artificial. Glues come from natural sources and adhesives are man made.
History
-
In 4,000 BC Babylonians used glue to keep the eyeballs of statues in their sockets, In 1,000 AD Genghis Khan conquered Asia with a laminate bow made by gluing together layers of lemon wood and bullhorn. In the 19th century, Antonio Stradivari built musical instruments of unsurpassed tonal quality in part because of a glue whose recipe has been lost.
-
Features
-
Adhesives and glues share many properties including the fact that they adhere to themselves chemically and to other objects physically. The molecules of glues and adhesives are entangled at a chemical level, but they both adhere to other objects by filling in the nooks and crannies inherent in the surfaces of most objects.
Types
-
Both glues and adhesives come in a large number of types. One ancient type of glue is the animal glues that are made from collagen. These glues are made by boiling horn, tendons, or hides and allowing the mixture to cool. One interesting class of modern adhesives are the minimally sticky adhesives used to coat post-it notes.
Potential
-
Some of the newest "sticky" substances work on the atomic level--utilizing the attractions of atoms for each other. These high tech substances are adhesives in the sense that they are man made, but glues in that they are derived from nature--they have been used by gecko's for millions of years--further blurring the distinction between glues and adhesives.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit glue bottle image by Bruce MacQueen from Fotolia.com
