Dividing the load by the actual (current) area of the specimen, we get the true stress. Similarly, the true strain is obtained by dividing the elongation o by the current gage length. The nominal and true measures are essentially the same in the working range of metals. They differ only for very large strains, such as occur in rubber-like materials or in ductile metals just before rupture. With only a few exceptions, engineering applications use nominal stress and strain.