Polymer Physics (eBook)

This book is the result of my teaching efforts during the last ten years at the Royal Institute of Technology. The purpose is to present the subject of polymer physics for undergraduate and graduate students, to focus the fundamental aspects of the subject and to show the link between experiments and theory. The intention is not to present a compilation of the currently available literature on the subject. Very few reference citations have thus been made. Each chapter has essentially the same structure: starling with an introduction, continuing with the actual subject, summarizing the chapter in 30D-500 words, and finally presenting problems and a list of relevant references for the reader. The solutions to the problems presented in Chapters 1-12 are given in Chapter 13. The theme of the book is essentially polymer science, with the exclusion of that part dealing directly with chemical reactions. The fundamentals in polymer science, including some basic polymer chemistry, are presented as an introduction in the first chapter. The next eight chapters deal with different phenomena (processes) and states of polymers. The last three chapters were written with the intention of making the reader think practically about polymer physics. How can a certain type of problem be solved? What kinds of experiment should be conducted? This book would never have been written without the help of my friend and adviser, Dr Anthony Bristow, who has spent many hours reading through the manuscript. criticizing the content.