At some point in the low extension regime (i.e. as all of the kinks along the chain are being extended simultaneously) it becomes energetically more favorable to have one kink transition to an extended conformation in order to stretch the chain further. The applied strain can force a single isoprene unit within a kink into an extended conformation, slightly increasing the end-to-end distance of the chain, and the energy required to do this is less than that needed to continue extending all of the kinks simultaneously. Numerous experiments strongly suggest that stretching a rubber network is accompanied by a decrease in entropy. As shown in Fig. 2, an isoprene unit has three single C-C bonds and there are two or three preferred rotational angles (orientations) about these bonds that have energy minima. Of the 18 allowed rotational conformations, only 6 have extended end-to-end distances and forcing the isoprene units in a chain to reside in some subset of the extended states must reduce the number of rotational conformations available for thermal motion. It is this reduction in the number of available states that causes the entropy to decrease. As the chain continues to straighten, all of the isoprene units in the chain are eventually forced into extended conformations and the chain is considered to be "taut." A force constant for chain extension can be estimated from the resulting change in free energy associated with this entropy change. As with regime Ia, the force model for this regime is linear and proportional to the temperature divided by the chain tortuosity.