The pictures shows an endlinked network with 2500 strand of length 100. Only 1-2% of the strands are shown. The same network is shown at uniaxial strain 1,2,3. Furthermore, the fourth picture shows the unstrained network affinely deformed to strain 3 for comparison.
The unstrained network shows strands take up random-walk conformations, as the strain is increse the strands progressively align with the imposed strain. Notice, the macroscopic deformation will not persist down to monomeric length scales, where bond length remains unchanged. Hence, there exists a mesoscopic length scale (the tube diameter) above which the network deforms in an affine manner as any solid has to do, while at length scales shorter than the tube diameter the network is unaffected by the strain.
