The process of making rubber stronger and more useful by heating it with sulphur. Raw rubber straight from the tree is a poor material: it goes soft and sticky when it is hot, and hard and brittle when it is cold. Vulcanization fixes that. After it, rubber stays springy in summer and winter, and that is why car tyres, shoe soles, rubber bands and hoses can exist at all. The word names the process, not the thing — you talk about 'the vulcanization of rubber', or 'after vulcanization'. It is a technical word: you will meet it in science class, in factory writing, and in the history of industry, not in daily conversation. Charles Goodyear is usually given the credit for discovering it in the 1830s, which is why an American tyre company carries his name. British writers usually spell it 'vulcanisation' with an s; Americans use the z. Both are the same word.

硫化（橡膠加硫使其變硬變韌的處理過程）