Science in Technology
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short decades ago, any editor who dared place Two the title . “Chemical Engineering Fundamentals”
the physicist can respect; indeed, the citations in this review attest that they utilize the physicist’s work. Their interest is its application with a crystal-clear insight that can relegate the “factor of safety” to the dark ages from which it sprung. The chemical age shares with the air age the incentives that have placed such a high premium on this superior clam of engineering. In aircraft, for example, an added pound in a functioning element requires many more pounds in supporting structure, lifting surface, and power plant to make the whole equally effective or, sometimes, even operative. Similar “feedback” situations exist in many chemical plant designs. A chemical company in today’s economic competition can cresh just as resoundingly with a grossly overdesigned plant as would an airplane. Our national defense program haa been another major factor in accelerating the application of science in technology. Performance goals for rockets and guided missiles, for example, have led to specifications fantastically beyond the range of previous know-how. Progress could be made only with new scientific knowledge. And engineers were needed with the technical capacity and professional courage to proceed immediately to design, without the comforting cushion of easy extrapolation from previous experience. Some fascinating chemical problems are wrapped up in this work. In this same field, information had to be ohtained about transitory compounds occurring during combustion. Fuel reaction products sometimes remain in the propulsion chamber too short a time to reach the equilibrium normally assumed, and it is vitally important to know how much thrust energy can be obtained with a given rate of propellent combustion. Such chemical knowledge is certain to find many useful applications far afield from rocketry. These developments will accelerate the re-estahlishment of the concept, blurred since Leonard0 da Vinci’s time, that all scientific knowledge is a continuous, manydimensional spectrum. The scientist and the engineer, once poles apart in their methodology, are meeting ever more frequently on the common bedrock of fundamentals. We may not he too far away from the era when they can he distinguished only by their technical motivations, and the distance they travel on the route from theory to practice.
on a review such as appears on page 891 of this issue would have been laughed out of countenance. In 1953, not only does the thought fit comfortably with the times, hut the need for such a review is large enough to justify the substantial efforts that have gone into the estahfishment of this new feature. We would he remiss if we did not take this opportunity to thank the many persons who contributed t o the development of the review. Last July, on this page, we concluded our announcement that a new feature was in preparation by asking for comments and suggestions. From the numerous replies, several very desirable improvements originated. The name, chemical engineering fundamentals, was suggested by several. Our concept of the section on mathematics was enlarged to encompass computers and statistics. The additional section on colloidal and surface phenomena came from a suggestion. Most encouraging of all to the editors, the announcement met with a universally favorable reception, a much-appreciated stimulus here in the formative months. And finally, we were extremely heartened to secure in almost every instance our first choice for authors of the various sections. In the broad picture, this new review dramatizes the swift progress being made today in linking our basic sciences with engineering application. The very essence of engineering, practical plant design, is being converted rapidly from its trial-and-error “knowhow” origin. The integral sign is fast losing its onetime connotation of academic abstraction. True enough, many of those who are bridging practice and theory are “long-hairs” in the literal sense of the term. But their shaggy manes bespeak the allure of irresistible opportunity everywhere, not ignorance of the world around them. These are the people who foresee with unconcealed excitement the possibilities that chemical reactions may some day he defined in the simple terms of bond energies. They look forward to the time when statistical expressions of molecular motion yield the penultimate equations for heat, phase, and density. They are seeking the fundamental laws of fluid motion to determine the basic parameters for phase contacting and heat and mass transfer. For these people are engineers. Their tool is research that 875
