This book, which is about chemical physics as well as about ice, has been written with two general classes of readers in mind. The principal group, as indicated by the inclusion of the book in the present series, consists of graduate or advanced undergraduate students in physics or physical chemistry who have already taken the usual courses in quantum mechanics and solid–state physics and are looking for something on which to try their teeth. The detailed study of a reasonably simple material like ice is admirable for this purpose; not only does it employ a whole range of the techniques learnt in more formal courses but also it shows these techniques and concepts in relation to one another. For these people I have tried at all stages to show the connexions between the various properties discussed and, in particular, the way in which they all derive from the structure of the water molecule itself.

The second group is made up of those who are interested in ice for its own sake—glaciologists, cloud physicists and the like—and for these I have taken the view that what is really required is an exposition of what is now generally regarded as understood and accepted about the chemical physics of ice.