Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews
edited by
Jeffrey Kovac University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
The Physics and Chemistry of Materials by Joel I. Gersten and Frederick W. Smith Wiley–Interscience: New York, 2001. 856 pp, ISBN 0-47105794-0. $110 Reviewed by Christopher L. Cahill
Chemistry departments today increasingly have significant materials components. Faculty and research groups are labeled “materials chemists”—hybrids of the four traditional subsections of organic, analytical, physical, and inorganic chemistry. Consequently, those interested in materials chemistry often need to incorporate materials topics into their regular courses or are forced to develop a materials-based curriculum by bringing together content from several different sources to cover the vast scope of this area. Gersten and Smith elegantly address the latter issue with their comprehensive text, The Physics and Chemistry of Materials. The authors have assembled an extensive collection of subjects and present them in a logical and systematic fashion. The text is divided into five sections, beginning with a chapter on the structures of materials. This section is clearly intended to promote and develop an understanding of structure– property relationships, an idea not often well developed in a single text. A physical properties section follows, again with an emphasis on how the structures are responsible for what is observed. Interestingly, the properties are presented prior to the third section on classes of materials. I found this order helpful as phenomena were described in detail and then exemplified. An excellent section on surface properties follows, encompassing thin films, multilayers, and interfaces. Synthesis and processing close the text, with heavy emphasis on industrially relevant and thermodynamically favored systems. The book does not contain an extensive treatment of characterization, but 102 additional pages on this topic are available on the companion Web site. Noteworthy sections of particular interest to chemists include a very physical treatment of polymers, a section on
thin films, and an excellent resource for the mechanical properties of materials, topics not widely available in chemistry texts. With the vast range of subject matter included in this text, I was indeed surprised to find hydrothermal chemistry largely overlooked. Considering the scope of materials produced in this fashion such as zeolites (although these do merit a brief section) and metal–organic frameworks, I found a discussion of their syntheses to be notably absent, partly because I was hoping to find this topic treated as rigorously as some others in the book! A caveat concerning use of this book, meant more as an observation than a criticism: the level of material is likely to be too advanced for even senior undergraduates. Rigorous mathematical treatment is the norm for most sections. Students without a strong mathematics (and physics) background will probably struggle. Further, much of the content should not be regarded as an introduction, but rather as a precursor to a detailed treatment of the properties of materials. A notable example of this is Chapter One, “The Structure of Crystals”, where students would likely have trouble grasping the basics of Bravais lattices, Miller indices, and representative structure types from the presentation. The authors address this concern with an excellent Web-based companion to the text. Although this supplement is an enormous resource (perhaps the largest commitment to a Web component of a text that I have seen), the material contained therein serves more for additional details, not as an introduction. This stressed to me that students should ideally have a significant grasp of the fundamentals in order to harness the full potential of this book. In summary, this is an excellent text for advanced students and an excellent reference for more experienced chemists who want to improve their understanding of the physics of materials. Its range of coverage with an emphasis of developing a physical basis for the understanding of materials’ properties is certainly unmatched. Christopher L. Cahill is in the Department of Chemistry, George Washington University, 725 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052;
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 80 No. 4 April 2003 • Journal of Chemical Education
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