Summary

This flexible, self-contained tutorial outlines basic thermal methods, their extremely wide range of application, and the ways in which they are affected by experimental conditions. Numerous exercises are designed to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and self-assessment questions and interpretive exercises using real, raw laboratory data provide students with a practical, overall grasp of the subject which can then be followed up with more detailed readings suggested in the bibliography. By the end of this tutorial, students will know how to set up, calibrate, and operate a thermobalance calorimeter (for DSC) or analyser (for DTA); select optimimum operating conditions for obtaining thermal data by TG/DSC/DTA; prepare a variety of samples for thermal analysis and many other basic techniques. The ``open learning'' approach allows students to work on their own at their own pace.