Amazon.com description: Product Description: This text presents the structural characteristics of plastics, rubbers, and polymer composites, describing how these important materials are converted into useful products. Engineering principles and design procedures are accorded an exceptionally clear and rigorous treatment, illustrated with carefully chosen model calculations, numerous worked examples and problems. Aimed at undergraduates and postgraduate students of engineering and materials science, the book opens with chapters showing why plastics and rubbers have such distinctive properties and how they are affected by temperature, strain rate, and other factors. The second half of the book concentrates on the ways in which these properties can be exploited to produce components that function in the most effective manner.