Interpretation Of Particle Size Reported By Different Analytical Techniques

By Paul Webb, Micromeritics

This article begins with a a pertinent story from the writers tenure as a mediocre graduate student in Physics. A fellow student and I were working together on a homework set. We had spent the majority of the day on a particularly difficult problem that resulted in a lengthy equation expressed in terms of assorted variables. I turned to the back of the book to compare our result to that of the author's and was astonished by the dissimilarity. I showed the 'correct' solution to my friend, a far better and more confident student than I. After looking at it he asked, "Did we apply the appropriate theorems?" I affirmed that we had. Next, he asked, "Did we make any mathematical errors?" I was confident that we had not. "Then," he proclaimed, "our solution is correct-- we just are expressing it in different terms."

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