Polymer Science, Early physical methods

At the end of the 1930s, the only generally available method for determining mean MWs of polymers was by chemical analysis of the concentration of chain end-groups this was not very accurate and not applicable to all polymers. The difficulty of applying well tried physical chemical methods to this problem has been well put in a reminiscence of early days in polymer science by Stockmayer and Zimm (1984). The determination of MWs of a solute in dilute solution depends on the ideal, Raoult s Law term (which diminishes as the reciprocal of the MW), but to eliminate the non-ideal terms which can be substantial for polymers and which are independent of MW, one has to go to ever lower concentrations, and eventually one runs out of measurement accuracy . The methods which were introduced in the 1940s and 1950s are analysed in Chapter 11 of Morawetz s book. 

The last three decades have seen ion beam analysis transform from a relatively obscure technique, little used in polymer science, to a popular method to test theoretical developments in polymer physics. The early 1990s saw a dramatic increase in the volume and range of polymer research utilizing ion beam analysis to understand the physics of polymer blends and their surfaces. At this time, there were some significant developments in this methodology, which improved its spatial resolution in polymer systems. More recently, IBA has become a valuable tool for probing complex materials. 

By contrast, polymer materials. science. still is in its early days. In the collection Physics today and tomorrow , S.Frenkel contrasts nuclear energetics with polymer materials science the theoretical principles of nuclear physics were developed before their introduction to practice, while polymer tecimology started for before science per sc and still uses widely trial-and-error methods. 

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