applied polymer science: 21st century (edited by craver, clara d.; carraher, charles e., jr.)
TRANSCRIPT
Chemical Education Today
942 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 79 No. 8 August 2002 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
Book & Media Reviews
Applied Polymer Science: 21st Century
edited by Clara D. Craver and Charles E. Carraher, Jr.
Elsevier Science Ltd.: Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2000. xiv +1072 pp. ISBN 0-08-043417 7. $225.
reviewed by Shawn B. Allin
Applied Polymer Science: 21st Century is an impressivetome that highlights traditional and emerging areas of poly-mer science and celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Divi-sion of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE)of the American Chemical Society. The book is divided intosix sections with a total of 47 chapters. Section titles includeIntroduction, Polymer Science and Technology, Coatings,New Materials, Spectroscopic and Physical Characterization,and Polymerization and Polymerization Mechanisms. Thesections range from four to 17 chapters.
The Introduction section includes these chapters: His-tory of the American Chemical Society Division of PolymericMaterials: Science and Engineering; Introduction to PolymerScience and Technology; Polymer Nomenclature; and Poly-mer Education. While the first and fourth chapters willmainly be of interest to PSME members, the second and thirdare excellent primers for the material that follows.
The section on Polymer Science and Technology is thebook’s largest and most diverse. Its 17 chapters include Poly-mer Chain Configurations: Measurement and Applications;Polyolefins; Styrene Polymers and Copolymers; Poly(vinylchloride); Plasticizers; Engineering Thermoplastics; Thermo-set Plastics; Thermoset Elastomers; Thermoplastic Elastomersand Applications; Fibers; Adhesive and Sealant Chemistry;Industrially Important Polysaccharides; Electrically Conduct-ing Polymers; History and Development of Polymer Blendsand IPNS; Polymer Processing; Fire and Polymers; Epoxy Res-ins; and Developments in the Commercialization of WaterSoluble Polymer.
Coatings are covered by the inclusion of eight chapters titledHistory of Coatings; High Performance Industrial Coatings;Advances in Alkyd Resins; White Pigments; Colored OrganicPigments; Solvents in Today’s Coatings; Rheology and CoatingFlows; and Water-Borne Coatings. Combined, they form anexcellent introduction to the coating field for the nonexpert.
The New Materials section is a catchall that is edited ina slightly different manner from the rest of the book. Insteadof distinct chapters dealing with each topic, three entries,
Polymer Materials for Microelectronics Imaging Applications,Polymers for Electronic Packaging in the 21st Century, andOrganometallic and Metal-Containing Organic Polymers—An Overview, are supplemented with an extremely diverse,13-author chapter titled New Materials for the 21st Century.Essentially, this chapter consists of nine sub-chapters rang-ing from computer modeling to synthesis and processing.Tapping experts in the field to write these two- to five-pagesummaries is one of the book’s strengths.
The section on polymer characterization is comprehen-sive with chapters devoted to FTIR, NMR, Raman, massspectrometry, fluorescence, and particle-size distribution inaddition to thermal and dynamic mechanical properties. Eachchapter reviews the current state of the art and clearly indi-cates the advantages and limitations of the technique.
The final section, Polymerization and PolymerizationMechanism, covers the expected topics in chapters entitledFree Radical Polymerization; Step-Growth Polymerization;Ionic Polymerization; and An Overview of Transition Metal-Mediated Polymerizations: Catalysts for the 21st Century.One highlight in this section is the excellent discussion ofcontrolled radical polymerization by Matyjaszewski andGaynor.
The strength of Applied Polymer Science: 21st Century liesin the diversity of its chapters and the style in which they arewritten. All too often collected works contain chapters deal-ing with a topic in minutiae, thus rendering it inaccessibleto nonexperts. Thankfully, the 70 contributing authors haveproduced monographs that are accessible to practicing chem-ists and chemical engineers, in addition to doing justice tothe individual topics. The inclusion of a comprehensive key-word index further increases the utility of this collection. Ofcourse, no one should expect a comprehensive discussion ofany of the aforementioned topics in an average of just 21pages per chapter.
The collection of 47 highly readable review articles in asingle volume makes Applied Polymer Science: 21st Centuryan excellent resource. While its breadth makes it unsuitablefor use as a text, it will be a valuable addition to the shelf ofanyone interested in modern applications of polymer science.Additionally, libraries would be well advised to obtain a copyto provide their patrons with an excellent introduction to avariety of topics.
Shawn B. Allin is in the Department of Chemistry, Phys-ics, and Engineering, Spring Hill College, Mobile, AL 36608;[email protected].
Always online at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCEWWW/Features/BG.html