PREFACE

 

Polymer as a material plays an important role in almost every aspect of human life. Over the last 20 years, the production of polymeric materials such as engineering plastics, elastomers, adhesives, coatings, textiles, packaging, foams, devices in electronics, optics, biotechnology and bio-engineering has doubled while all other materials has grown only about 25 percent. Today, the annual volume production of polymeric materials exceeds the combined production of all other materials.   Polymers are subject of interest of various disciplines such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, biochemistry and biology.  This diversity of academic disciplines aiming to design new macromolecules and to understand their structure-property relations created the interdisciplinary polymer science and technology branch, which lies at the borderlines between chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, and engineering sciences.

Polymer Science and Technology (PST) graduate program at the Istanbul Technical University has been launched to educate the students in the field of polymer science and technology, which is highly prized in both industry and academia in Turkey. We found that almost every former student from the department of chemistry was employed in a polymer-related industry.   The aim of the graduate program is to educate the students in the theory and practice of macromolecules in an interdisciplinary atmosphere.  Our goal is to educate top-quality polymer scientists to fill the growing requirements in industry and in the universities by conducting qualified scientific research in our laboratories

"Synthesis and Characterization of Macromolecules" is a laboratory course offered in the PST program.  This course is a "core" course of theprogram, and there are no special prerequisites.  This laboratory book was prepared by the member of PST Program for this course.   It contains 11 experiments relating to the current topics of macromolecules.  The organization of the experiments covers the basic ideas of physical and organic chemistry of polymers including synthesis strategies of polymers, their molecular structure, physical properties, and experimental techniques.  The experiments also reflect the topics of ongoing research works in our laboratories; therefore, it is hoped that this will help to our graduate students to select their research areas.  The experimental procedures and the methods of data treatment are described in great detail.  In addition, each experiment starts with a short introduction to provide our students a theoretical background.  The depth of these sections are not great but the references supplied at the end of each section will provide further informations.

We are welcome comments from those who are using this book, either as students or instructors.

 

 

Prof. Dr. Oğuz OKAY

February 16, 2000