From its inception this Society has been keenly interested in the techniques and results of analytical chemistry. Many of its distinguished fellows, notably Boyle, Hooke, Priestley and Davy, made direct contributions to the subject. Others, such as Faraday, Stokes, Rutherford, Aston and the Braggs, laid down the foundations of methods now extensively used for automatic analytical purposes. If, as is often argued, chemistry is the language of experimental science, it must surely be agreed that analytical chemistry constitutes the grammar. The need to know which chemical elements are present in a given specimen, and the nature of their combination, is fundamental. Moreover, efforts to improve the sensitivity and versatility of analytical techniques never cease. Until a few decades ago the stoichiometry and structure of nominally pure materials could not readily be established, with the techniques then available, if quantities of the substance to be analysed were in the milligram range. Nowadays, as some of the papers to be presented at this Discussion Meeting will reveal, the situation is very different. Femtogram (10-
15
g) quantities or less can be identified or characterized by X-ray emission or energy-loss spectroscopic methods by using a fine pencil of high-energy electrons as primary beams. Moreover, gas chromatography can now be so automated, and so strategically deployed, as the paper by Purnell describes, that mixtures of several dozen components of chemically similar species may be routinely separated and identified. Technological achievement has transformed the subject, and many traditional methods are no longer suitable or appropriate
The Study of the Scale through Space. Teaching Innovation Experience among Architecture Schools: Malaga, Seville and Palermo