Empirical and Scientific Methods of Investigation

However, the history of the science of construction materials, includingpolymeric ones, reveals that the solution to the main problem, namely the creation of high-quality materials with the required properties, may be achieved only when using a strictly scientific approach. 

This somewhat critical situation may be resolved by the determination of specific and general physical and chemical regularities governing the formation and behavior of polymeric foams, which requires the use of a wide range of ideas and techniques developed in other sciences physical and colloidal chemistry, physicochemical mechanics, rheology, thermodynamics, physics of polymers, physics and mechanics of non-continuous media, physics of surface and transfer phenomena, chemical physics of oxidation and degradation processes, etc. 

2 A Common Physicochemical Approach and Specificity of Scientific Problems 

In the author s opinion, the analysis of the problems of chemistry, technology and properties of plastic foams should be carried out both from the viewpoint of the chemistry and physics of ojndensed systems, including the physics of polymers. 

A common approach to the study of properties, in particular variations of properties under external effects, should include, as one of the basic ideas, the conception of polymeric foams as heterogeneous systems with developed surface (see Chap. 5.4). As became apparent in the early 1970 s, the specific surface of these materials is of the order of dozens and even hundreds of square meters per gram Such high values of the specific surface are quite exceptional among polymeric materials and lead to marked (in relation to expected) changes in several physicochemical properties of plastic foams, for example water absorption and resistance to thermal oxidation. 

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