NOVEMBER 20,1938 the oxidation of ammonia, the manufacture of sulfuric acid and of nitric acid, including concentration. He had worked in the field of explosives, the fixation of nitrogen, and high-pressure gas technic. Mr. Zeisberg always found time to serve the professional societies of which he was a member. He was secretary of the Delaware Section of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY in 1919 and its chair-
man in 1921. Preceding his presidency of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, to which he wasfirstelected in 1937. he had served two terms as director and had been vice president, besides an active member on a number of committees. He was particularly interested in ways for improving technical papers and for their publication. For some years he served as a member of the Board of Editors of the Technologic Series of Monographs of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY.
He is survived by Mrs. Zeisberg and three children. Utilization of Sulfur Contained in Smelter Smoke HE conversion of waste material which may be somewhat of a nuisance into a T marketable mineral product is the object
of a study being conducted by the Bureau of Mines, U. S. Department of the Interior, designed to recover sulfur from smelter smoke. The specific problem is to devise means to reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide emitted from the smokestacks of mines and concentrating plants that sinter, roast, and smelter metallic sulfides. Some of the smoke reaches the ground and has a more or less damaging effect thereon, and the problem is to extract the sulfur from the furnace gases before they reach the atmosphere outside. One of the methods for extracting the sulfur is to use some suitable solution to absorb the sulfur dioxide. The results of some experiments made on three of the most promising amines as absorbents are available in Report of Investigations 3415, of the Bureau of Mines. The capacities of these and other absorbing solutions are compared, but several factors, found only by large-scale tests, enter into the choice of a suitable absorbent. A supplement to this report reviews the principal articles recently published in the technical press on sulfur dioxide recovery, as well as several patents. Copies of this report may be obtained from the Bureau of Mines, Washington, D.C.
Sampling and Analysis of Coal REPORT containing material of value to chemists and engineers concerned with sampling, analysis, classification, or utilization of coals has been published by the Bureau of Mines, U. S. Department of the Interior, as Technical Paper 586, "Notes on the Sampling and Analysis of Coal." The report is a revised and enlarged edition of a technical paper bearing the same title published in 1914. The accuracy and limitations of methods of analysing coal, especially the proximate analysis, are explained and their relation· ehipe to the commercial value of coal are discussed. Besides covering the analysis of coal and the laboratory preparation of samples for analysis, the publication discusses coal ash fusibility and its relation to clinker formation and the classification of coals by rank. Copies may be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C , at a price of 10 cents.
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Consumer Products—A Challenge to Industrial Chemistry Lyman Chalkley, P. O. Bos 461, Point Pleasant, N. J. HE tremendous contributions of chemT istry to our civilization are well known, but there are places where the chemical
products in use today lag far behind the advance of chemistry. These places are not unusual. They are our homes—the homes of all of the people of the country. And the products are not unusual either. They are the most widely and consistently used of commercial chemical preparations —such things as dentifrices, soaps, prepared foods, simple home remedies, cold creams, and other cosmetics. These consumer products largely reflect the science and technology of one, two, or three generations ago. Our homes are equipped with examples of the best and most up-to-date engineering practice, with perfected mechanical refrigerators, radios, oil burners, and automobiles. But year after year, generation after generation, we have the same old chemical products (though sometimes called by new names) in the bathroom, in the pantry, and on the dressing table. A chemist does not need a special agency to tell him that many, if not most, of these products fall far short of what could be accomplished in the light of modern chemical ana biological knowl-
course, consumer products represent only one of many fields to which the industrial chemist can apply his skill. But they comprise a worthy field from the standpoint both of their importance in the lives of the people and of the profits which they bring their manufacturers. The total business done in consumer products runs into astronomical figures. Even the individual items have large markets. Of these a single manufacturer may enjoy a considerable share. The Federal Census of Manufactures reports that the 1931 domestic production of dentifrices was worth $35,477,434 at manufacturers' prices. From 20 to 35 per cent of this should represent profit. The 1931 production of some other items was: cosmetic creams, $23,709,771 ; toilet soap, $52,164,000; bar laundry soap, $66,939,000; chewing gum, $51,340,000; oleomargarine, $25,689,000; breakfast foods, $100,092,000. Compare these figures with the production in the same year of such basic heavy chemicals as sulfuric acid, $32,138,000, and caustic soda produced for sale, $26,565,000. For years the home-product industries have presented opportunities for chemistry. The situation has grown from one of opportunity to one of challenge. After years of increasing protest from consumer groups, the Federal Government has recognized the inadequacies of home-chemical products by passing two 1938 laws covering the labeling and advertising of foods, drugs, and cosmetics. The passage of these laws seems to indicate that the Government believes many of the consumer chemical products are unsatisfactory and fail to meet the needs of consumers, and that the manufacturers have tried-to make up for the deficiencies of their products by advertising extravagant claims and promises which the products are quite unable to fulfill. When consumers have federal laws passed to emphasize their need for better chemical products, the situation presents a challenge to the industrial chemist. How can the chemist meet this challenge? Let us examine the situation a little more in detail to see if we can find an
answer. How could such a situation have come about? Why have chemists not been better able to satisfy consumers? Certainly they have tried. There has been some success. A man who is familiar with the consumer products on the market can pick out here and there commercial products which reflect sound and up-to-date chemical practice. Yet only a market expert could find many of these scientifically worked out products; for the larger number have little sale. The consumers still buy the old-fashioned products that have been developed to their present state of chemical imperfection by bit-or-miss methods. It seems almost as though consumers dislike products which have had the benefit of the best chemical research in their creation and development. We are faced by the paradox that consumers are so dissatisfied with the present products that they clamor for federal laws to improve conditions, and yet when they have been given a choice between a thoroughly sound chemical creation and an unscientific and illogical mixture, they have usually overwhelmingly chosen the unscientific mixtures—which they continue to protest are unsatisfactory. This apparent contradiction is not a new phenomenon, although the Copeland and Wheeler-Lea laws which give it emphasis are. The situation is one that has baffled industrial chemists for a long time. It so puzzled, and therefore fascinated, me ten years ago when I was an industrial chemist that I left the laboratory and found a place in an advertising agency with the nope that a solution would be revealed by a direct study of consumers. Such studies have revealed the answer, I believe. But that answer proved to be so simple and obvious that it can be embodied in a single sentence: Consumers' specifications are not the same as chemists' specifications. Consumers would like to have a harmless dentifrice that really would clean the stains and tartar off their teeth, or prevent decay, or ensure healthy gums; but they will not sacrifice such factors as flavor, feel of the dentifrice in their mouths, convenience of use, which make a dentifrice attractive and make it pleasant to brush one's teeth. Consumers would love to have a hand lotion that had a more positive healing effect on chapped skin, but not at the expense of perfume, or consistency, or feel. Consumers would like dried fruits prepared without sulfur dioxide or other preservative, but not at the cost of buying a more expensive, discolored mass which has to be used immediately and even then may have bugs in it. Thus the paradox is resolved. Consumers do want better products, and chemists would like to make better products, but the two groups do not mean the same thing by that word "better." A product that is ''better" to the chemist is not necessarily "better" in the eyes of the consumer. In fact, it may be distinctly worse, because to make a scientific imrovement the chemist may have sacriced some chemically insignificant feature which is, however, more valuable in the opinion of the consumer than the real improvement that has been achieved. Consumers are not chemists. They are humanity with all of the unscientific attributes of the human animal. They think with their emotions. Choices are
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INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
based on sense preferences—mostly sight, taste» smell, ana touch. Their purchases, like their lives, are guided by selfishness and generosity, humility and pride· and all the other conflicting motives. To be suc cessful, a consumer product must be ac ceptable on the basis of these human standards. Laboratory perfection is only one factor in the composite of product attributes. All of this is so simple and obvious that it brings up another question: Why have not industrial chemists taken the complete set of "consumer specifications," both scien tific and human, into account when work ing on consumer products? The probable reason is that chemists have not realized the importance of the human element in the consumer specifications. The chem ist thinks of himself as a scientist. When he undertakes a Job he is inclined to view his responsibility as limited to the strictly scientific features of the problem. He is apt t o overlook that when deciding t h e chemical character of the product ne is also building into the product the humanfactor group of consumer specifications as well. Yet this is exactly what the chemist does every time he touches a consumer No disclaimers can alter this {>roduct. act. Therefore, he must work with con sumers' foibles as well as with chemistry. If he cannot do this he is no better fitted to make a satisfactory consumer product than was the old-fashioned medicine show proprietor, who knew only human nature and no science. When the full importance of the con sumers' viewpoint has been recognized, there still remains the problem of a ra tional procedure for the conversion of this rather intangible attitude into concrete specifications for a product. The mere statement that consumer specifications differ from chemists' specifications makes the problem seem too easy. Everyone is a consumer. Thus the chemist should, a t first glance, be able to sit back in his chair, imagine himself a t home consuming, and by the application of reason and logic arrive a t a set of satisfactory consumer specifications. But the solution is not so simple. Most consumers do not function by reason and logic. People far more experienced in consumer behavior than most chemists have had their fingers burned in trying t o deduce consumer preferences from past experience and present knowledge. For instance, the manufacturer of a popular mouth wash had proof through his sales that the flavor of his product found wide acceptance among consumers. I t seemed logical to make a tooth paste with the same popular flavor. This he did. He immediately learned that the popular mouth wash flavor was not acceptable in a tooth paste. This was not an accident. The manufacturer of a popular tooth paste had the same sort of idea, only to learn that his popular tooth paste flavor was not liked by consumers when they found it in a mouth wash. While there is as yet no science of con sumer desires with laws and principles from which product specifications can be deduced, consumer preferences can be empirically measured and analyzed by ex perimental methods. The general prin ciple is to use consumers as guinea pigs in a carefully controlled set of experiments designed to build a complete list of con sumer specifications from the preferred odors, tastes, textures, colors, and other factors which must be built into the prod uct. The methods are, of course, statisti cal because a market has only a statistical existence. The technics for making such con sumer analyses of products have been in
process of development by market re search men for a number of years. These technics have now reached a stage of practical utility where they can be, and in a few cases are being, employed as a rou tine to supply consumer specifications. Where these procedures have been in telligently applied the resulting products have been outstandingly successful. Strangely enough, these developments have been fostered, not by scientists, but by advertising agencies and the sales de partments of a few manufacturing com panies. But, whatever their origin, here are tools ready a t hand for the industrial chemist. With their aid the chemists should be able to meet the challenge of consumer products, and to turn a field of backward chemical development into one of far-reaching achievement.
VOL. 16. NO. 22
EMANATIONS Colloid Chemistry a s O n e o f t h e Humanities
We see. in glancing down the ages» Colloidal facts on history's pages; How subdivision, done—or not» Has changed the future quite a lot. T h e land a bull's hide would enclose Bought wily Dido—to dispose Fermi Awarded Nobel Prize In threads nematie all that hide. i n Physics She threw the bull both far and wide. Behold! There lordly Carthage stands» NRICO FERMI, teacher and research worker at the University of Rome, A threat to Rome on Afric'e sands. has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Fermi, though only 36, is one At Massachusetts' Lexington of the world's leading scientists. Born in T h e minute-men refused to run. Rome, he was educated at the University "Disperse! Disperse!"» was Pitcairn's yell; of Pisa. Later he was made a member of They stood» a fire-spitting gel. the Italian Academy, and is one of the About them now a mighty nation youngest members of that body. He Stands firm in solid aggregation. visited the United States in 1936 t o take human personality charge of summer work in physics a t And Is changed by colloidality. Columbia University. Soaked in success that's pride-impelling» Heads may develop colloid swelling; George Fisher Baker Lecturers Or soaked in rum» that liquid hell» Man soon becomes an alcogel; a t Cornell His Brownian motion wabbles» ceases— URING the current academic year Precipitation—syneresis! Harold C. Urey of Columbia Univer sity, George B. Kistiakowsky of Harvard Life's charges» epsilon or zeta, All grow invariably greater. University, and Percy W. Bridgman of Harvard University will serve as George Our secondary dollar particles» Fisher Baker Lecturers in Chemistry a t Attacked by catalytic articles, Cornell University. The subjects of their T o primary cents are quickly split; We're broke and senseless—ana we quit. lectures and the duration thereof follow:
E
D
HAROLD C. UREY.
JEROME ALEXANDRE
' 'The Physics and Chem
istry of Isotopic Substances," November 15 to December 15, 1938.
GEOROE
B. KISTIAKOWSKY.
PERCY W. BRIDGMAN.
Concerning Heavy Wafer
"Thermody
namics of Simple Organic Molecules," February 14 to March 14, 1939. "The Properties of
Matter under Pressure·" April 11 to May 11, 1939.
Fete i n Honor o f Madame Curie HE fortieth anniversary of the dis T covery of radium and the 71st anni versary of the birth of Madame Curie were commemorated on November 6 in New York by Polish-Americans and represen tatives of Poland and France under the auspices of the New York State Confer ence of Polish Clubs and the United St. Stanislaus Societies. Francis Carter Wood, director of the Crocker Cancer Research Institute of Columbia University, praised the studies that Madame Curie carried on after the discovery of radium for their revolutionary efifect on understanding of the elements.
Standard for Carboy Stoppers of Porous Earthenware
T CIATION has issued a standard for carboy stoppers of porous earthenware»
HE MANUFACTURING CHEMISTS' ASSO
a publication which includes specification and method of testing. The authority for its use is the I. C. C. specification 1 A, Par. 4(a). The publication is known as Manual Sheet C-4 and is available through the Manufacturing Chemists' Association» Woodward Bldg., Washing ton, D . C , at 10 cents.
To the Editor: Kind Sir» please tell me truly Of this water that is newly Will it lather? If I use pure Ivory soap In this liquid isotope Will it lather? Or should I prefer Lifebuoy As in the ads they sometimes doey Will it lather? G. I. L.
Aesop Fable No· 2908 Editor, News Edition: N SUPPORT of J . W. Perry's contention regarding the claims of Fable No. 2908» we feel confident that although Claim. 3 is limited to quadrupeds of the genus Vulpes, we can establish the fact that Joseph was» t o say the least» "foxy."
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