Editors: Francis Birch, J.F. Schairer, H. Cecil Spicer
From the original preface: This collection of tables is the outcome of a resolution of the Interdivisional Borderlands Committee of the National Research Council:
“ Resolved that the chairmen of the Divisions of Chemistry, Physics, and Geology and Geography of the National Research Council, and the chairman of the Borderlands Committee be asked to recommend to the National Research Council that a steering committee be set up to direct the selection of personnel for the task of compiling a table of constants of geologic materials.”...(I)t was first necessary to define the scope of the new compilation... The interpretation to be put upon the term “geologic materials” might be broad or narrow; the amount of supplementary material such as conversion tables, numerical tables, and so on might be large or small...The interests of geologists range over an extremely wide field, and there is hardly a branch of natural science which does not make its contribution. The group from which the impulse to compile the present handbook came, however, represented the physical sciences, and principally the physical aspects of Geology. These are, moreover, the subdivisions of geological science which lend themselves most readily to treatment in tabular form. It was soon decided that this handbook should be devoted to the tabulation of quantities important for the Physics and Physical Chemistry of geological materials, but, even within this more restricted scope, the question of selection has not been an easy one to solve in a completely logical way, and the choices which have been made have no more valid basis than the more or less reasoned decisions of the various editors.
The objectives were reduced roughly to the following: (1) to extract from the literature material of interest primarily to geologists; (2 ) to subject this material to a critical revision; (3) to include brief introductions to the various tabulations, with the hope of making clear the meaning and limitations of the data; (4) to make evident the inadequacy of the information available on certain topics, with the hope of stimulating research in such fields. On the negative side, it was decided (1) to avoid duplication of large sections of existing handbooks; (2 ) to omit subjects, such as optical mineralogy, for example, which are at present well covered by special treatises; (3) to omit, or treat very briefly, manufactured materials such as porcelains, refractory bricks, and structural metals. These objectives, positive and negative, are debatable, and probably still more can be said on the way in which they have been realized in the present work.
Published: 1/31/1942
ISBN Number: 9780813720364
Pages: 335
Product Category: EBooks