Resinography: An Introduction to the Definition

Resinography is a strange new word to many people. Like all scientific terms, it is a word coined for a specific purpose: to indicate (in this case) that resins, polymers, and plastics write their own history on the molecular and other structural levels. The word indicates further that anyone trained and equipped to ask the right questions (by means of instruments and techniques) will be able to read that history. That person must have sufficient training and experience to interpret the answers, of course, and he or she needs to have the temperament of a detective. But in the end, as readers of this book will discover, one is able to identify the material, to determine its history of treatment, and to learn much about its possible field of usefulness. Obviously, the resinographer seeks to do the same thing with res- ins, polymers, and plastics that the metallographer does with metals and their alloys. Often the investigative techniques and the instru- ments, too, are similar, but sometimes they are decidedly different. Perhaps it would be best to say that resinography and metallographyl (and petrography as well) share a common origin, and that origin is deeply rooted in microscopy. The "grandfather" of all three "ographies" was Henry Clifton Sorby (1826-1908),2 who initiated 3 metallography and petrography, and was the first to report on the microstructure of a resin (amber, a natural fossil resin).