LETTERS Industrial Chemists & Chemical Engineers
8
Let’s Change Now
Compromise
Sir; As a graduated chemical engineer who saw the light and rapidly changed to physical chemistry, may I take up your invitation and comment on Professor Klinkenberg’s article [IND. ENG. CHEM.,61, (4), 5 3 (1969)], “The American Engineering System of Units and Its Dimensional Constant g.” T h e whole force of his analysis, lengthy and involved as it necessarily is, culminates in the remark that “brilliant chemical engineers sometimes have a weak moment regarding units”-imagine how the less brilliant suffer ! T h e engineering “system” of units is indeed a sorry mess, inviting error, and it is time that engineers took their courage in both hands, threw out their present concoctions, and made a fresh start with the International System (SI). Whatever SI’S present difficulties, with units of sometimes inconvenient and often unfamiliar size, it is not plagued with the irremediable defect of one name for two easily confused entities. Furthermore, the international scientific acceptance of SI and the corresponding legal adoption of the metric system in a n everincreasing circle of countries make certain that engineers will eventually take the enlightened view. For the sake of yourselves and your longsuffering profession I ask, why not now? L. Glasser Rhodes University Grahamstown, South Africa
Sir; Klinkenberg has done the profession a service. Having been educated in England on a strange combination of the “poundal-poundfoot-second” system and the horrors of various American chemical engineering textbooks, I’ve been through it all. Through experience, training, and possibly prejudice, I have come to believe that the optimal way through the jungle is to carry out all one’s thinking, equation juggling, and figuring in the absolute (poundalpound-foot-second) system, converting the results into “conventional” (i.e., familiar) units after everything else is done. J. E. Cook Mobil Chemical Co. New Yurk, N . Y.10017
YOU CAN ATTEND 3 IMPORTANT SYMPOSIA.. . RIGHT AT YOUR OWN DESK Informative papers from three “state-of-the-art” symposia sponsored by the ACS Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistryare nowavailable to you as attractive, hard-cover books. Co-sponsored by the ACS monthly magazine, INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY, these annual summer symposia are designed to bring practicing industrial chemists and chemical engineers up-to-date on broad subjects often. encountered in their day-to-day work. Use the order form below to order your books today. (1) Chemistry and Physlcs of Interfaces June 1964 Symposium-Sydney Ross, Chairman. Subjects include..
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Attractive Forces at Interfaces Adsorption and Thermodynamics at the Liquid-Llquid Interface , Surface Active Agents-Their Behavior and Industrial Use. .Zeta Potential Measurement. .Structure of Macromolecules on Liquid-Solid Interfaces.. immerSurface Sensitive aional Wetting of Solid Surfaces Mechanical Properties 177 pains (9 x 12) with index. Clolh bound. $7.50.
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(2) Nucleation Phenomena , June 1965 Symposium-Alan S. Michaels, Chairman.
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Mixing and Contacting i n Chemical Reactors , Photochemical Reaction Engineering , Reaction , Surface Mechanisms for Engineering Design Yield i n Models i n Heterogeneous Catalysis . Chemical Reactor Engineering Stochastic Mixing Models for Chemical Reactors 224 pages (9 x 12) wlth index. Cloth bound. $7.50.
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(1) Chemistn and Phyrlcsof lnlerfacss (2) NucitaUon Phenomena :3) Applied Kinetier and Chemlcal Reaction Enginoaring $
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