Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews
edited by
Edward J. Walsh Allegheny College Meadville, PA 16335
Polymer Chemistry: An Introduction, 3rd Edition by Malcolm P. Stevens Oxford University Press: New York, 1999. xix + 551 pp. Figs. and tables. ISBN 019-512444-8. $70. reviewed by Sonja Krause
This text is intended as an introductory text for a course in polymer chemistry for advanced undergraduates or graduate students, as well as an introduction to the field for industrial chemists. It is necessary to say this here even though this text is a third edition because these statements were not made in the review of the second edition (J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, A185). I would never use this volume as a text for any course, nor would I recommend it as a reference for an industrial chemist. I shall base my reasoning on Part I: Polymer Structure and Properties, pp 3–164, because it is closer to my areas of expertise than Parts II and III, which involve the synthesis and reactions of vinyl and nonvinyl polymers. It is unfortunate that a cursory glance at the table of contents of this book makes it look very appealing, especially since the third edition includes much on the newer synthetic methods, newer types of polymers like dendrimers and polyrotaxanes, and naturally occurring polymers. Furthermore, the first chapter, on basic principles, is quite good, except for a figure that purportedly shows the result of 100% reaction of an A–B monomer.
The main problem with this text is fairly common among comprehensive texts written by a single author. No one can be an expert on a topic as vast as polymer chemistry, organic, analytical, and physical. Professor Stevens is an organic chemist and I think that his organic chemistry–based chapters are better than the ones that I shall critique here. I shall note just a few of the problems that I found with Part I as I read through it. Figure 2.1, which presumably shows the end-to-end distance and the radius of gyration of a flexible polymer molecule, shows something quite different from the radius of gyration. The description of vapor pressure osmometry is wrong; it is never an equilibrium measurement and thus never follows the equation given. Figure 2.9 is a diagram of an extremely old-fashioned if not obsolete gel permeation chromatograph. Modern GPCs do not have siphons because they are low-volume, high-pressure instruments; also, modern viscosity and light-scattering GPC detectors allow the determination of the true molecular weight distribution on many samples. None of this is mentioned. In section 3.6, the author’s use of the fringed micelle model for crystalline polymers is obsolete and his discussion of spherulites is obscure. The single page on X-ray, electron, and neutron scattering gives very little insight into the unique features of each technique and the unique properties of polymers that can be studied by each technique. On some earlier pages, light scattering is discussed without showing that it can be used to study the radius of gyration. Sonja Krause is in the Department of Chemistry, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 77 No. 1 January 2000 • Journal of Chemical Education
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