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Preface

The first edition of this book was written following several years of teaching this material to third year undergraduate and honours students in the Department of Chemistry at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Science students are increasingly interested in the application of their studies to the real world, and colloid and surface chemistry is an area which offers many opportunities to apply learned understanding to everyday and industrial examples. There is a lack of resource materials with this focus, and so we produced the first edition with many industrial examples.

This second edition extends this to include several more recent and topical industrial innovations. It is still intended to take chemistry or physics students with no background in the area to the level where they are able to understand many natural phenomena and industrial processes and are able to consider potential areas of new research. It involves the study of the interaction between solids, liquids and gases and their application to numerous everyday processes.

Colloid and surface chemistry spans the very practical to the very theoretical, and less mathematical students may wish to skip some of the more involved derivations. However, they should be able to do this and still maintain a good basic understanding of the fundamental principles involved. It should be remembered that a thorough knowledge of theory can act as a barrier to progress, through the inhibition of further investigation. Students asking ignorant but intelligent questions can often stimulate valuable new research areas.

The book contains some recommended experiments, which we have found to work well and stimulate students to consider both the fundamental theory and industrial applications. Sample questions have also been included in some sections, with detailed answers available on our web site.

Although the text has been primarily aimed at students, researchers in cognate areas may also find some of the topics stimulating. A reasonable background in chemistry or physics is all that is required.

We also would like to gratefully acknowledge important contributions from several students, including John Antony and Mojtaba Taseidifar (for Chapter 3) and Mathew Francis and Rui Wei (for Chapter 11).

Richard M. Pashley

Marilyn E. Karaman

October 2020