About This Book

Why an ebook?

There are various advantages to making a text book an ebook. First, an ebook is much easier to update (and include corrections) than a paper text (if your poor, old author finds the energy). These changes will simply appear in the book and will not require the purchase of a second or third edition. Furthermore, the program and hosting service being used (Kotobee) allows users to bookmark pages, add highlights and insert notes and these become available to that user across his or her devices.

The book covers the usual topics (see “Contents”), but one thing an ebook does well is allow for the incorporation of interactive and supplementary material in an easily accessible manner. So, here and there asides called Polymer Innovators are included as scrollable inserts. These are brief summaries of the contributions of some great scientists and interesting characters to the field. In addition, books such as this, which are largely concerned with general principles, often do not give students a feel for the nature and use of specific polymers. Accordingly, (mostly)brief reviews called Fascinating Polymers are sprinkled in. These reviews are not intended to be comprehensive, but are aimed at giving students a feel for the depth of this field and its rich history. The writing style is conversational and is not to everyone’s taste, but it is how this author likes to write!