Order in the Amorphous “State” of Polymers

In 1975, a symposium was held in Midland, Michigan, co-sponsored by the Dow Chemical Company and the then Midland Macromolecular Institute in honor of Raymond F. Boyer on the occasion of his 65th birthday and retirement from Dow. The topic of that first Boyer symposium dealt with an area of interest to Boyer, namely, polymer transitions and relaxations. One decade later, after ten years of additional fruitful scientific endeavor at MMI, Ray Boyer was again honored with a symposium, this time celebrating his 75th birthday and 10th anniversary at the Michigan Molecular Institute. The topic of the second Boyer symposium in 1985 was somewhat more focused, this time concentrating on the subject of order (or structure) in the amorphous state of polymers and the attendant polymer transitions that are observed. This volume contains the full manuscripts of the contributors to the 17th MMI International Symposium, held in Midland, Michigan on August 18-21, 1985. Eleven one-hour plenary lectures and ten 20-minute contributed papers were presented during the Symposium. An open forum panel discussion was also scheduled; the edited transcript of that session is included at the end of this volume. One of our tasks in organizing this Symposium was to attempt to gather together a number of speakers who would be able to define what, if any, physical structure might be present in anwrplwus polymers and what the nature of this order might be.