David Bower. University of Cambridge Press, UK, 2002.
ISBN 0-521-63137-8
Reviewed by: Shrirang V. Ranade, Boston Scientific Corporation, Natick, MA, USA
Published in Microscopy & Analysis, September 2003
This book is a useful addition to the collection of introductory level polymer textbooks available since it primarily focuses on the physics of polymers without assuming any prior knowledge of polymer physics.
The book opens with a chapter dealing with a brief historical perspective of the development of synthetic polymers that will be of interest to the non-specialist. The next two chapters give an introduction and survey of characterization techniques used to analyze polymers in the solid state. Three chapters that focus on molecular size, morphology and structure of polymers follow. This serves to introduce the readers to polymer structure-property relationships, which is an important aspect that needs emphasis at the undergraduate level where the book is primarily aimed. The use of problem-sets at the end of each chapter is a welcome inclusion towards this objective, as is the fact that a solution set is enclosed at the end. Throughout the text there are worked examples that serve to reinforce a concept or help underline the importance and use of an equation. All of these features add to the utility of the book as a teaching text or even as a self-teaching guide for the non-specialist.
The second half of the book delves into areas of polymer mechanical properties (time-independent elasticity, linear viscoelasticity, yield and fracture) followed by a chapter on electrical and optical properties of polymers. I found this to be a particularly useful chapter that is usually not dealt with clearly by most introductory texts. The next two chapters deal with oriented polymers in quite a lot of detail – this serves to highlight the relationship between the practical aspects of polymer processing with the characterization and science that explains the phenomena. The final chapter is a focus on blends, copolymers and liquid crystal polymers. Again the necessary and important aspects of structure-property relationships are adequately developed. These middle chapters of the book are its strength and I find that the author covers these topics better than most introductory books available on the subject – mechanical properties, yield, fracture and orientation are introduced from first principles and a solid base developed for the students of polymer physics.
Overall, I found the book to have a nice blend of overview and detail; this is useful since no prior knowledge of polymer science is assumed. Being aimed primarily at undergraduates and as a teaching text it has the right combination of breadth and depth in the topics covered and so should be well received by the intended level of readership. Each chapter ends with a list of recommendations for further reading that should be useful to students that have a continuing interest in the subject. The quality of the layout and illustrations would rank as average, while the equations are clearly laid out and numbered to make reference easy.
The main criticism I would have for the book is that it concentrates too much on physics while ignoring the chemistry and chemical structure that is ultimately responsible for polymer properties. There is a lack of connection between polymer chemical structure and the physical properties such as thermal properties or microstructure. The book does not adequately address the relation of polymer physical properties to chemical architecture. Due to this, I would not recommend this book for undergraduates if this were the only polymer book they read. It does however, make an excellent companion to an introductory polymer chemistry book or course.