General chemistry laboratory operations(Tobais, R. Stuart)

Abstract

The authors indicate this text is designed for students "desiring a one-year exposure to the field of chemistry to prepare them for other professions or to increase their knowledge and understanding of current developments in chemical research." They planned to "include a balance between a brief historical development, the essential descriptive material, and the mechanisms of chemical reactions in general, organic, and biological chemistry" and offer the book as a survey of these fields.Any attempt to follow as broad a program as the authors suggest would doubtless invite criticism at every turnchoice of topics covered, depth of coverage, too much or too little mechanism, description, and theory. To focus on one small point, for example, one finds in the only chapter on metals covering all representative and transition metals complete with coordination compounds that in the total of twenty-seven pages about five of them are devoted to iron metallurgy with blast furnace, Bessemer, and open hearth processes all intact.Certainly a trained chemist going through a book like this as his eye catches flashes of term after term will probably subconsciously add his own understanding of them. But what a student, bringing with him very little prior knowledge of any of the material he is reading, could get out of this survey is another question. The twenty-seven page index is an indication of the number of terms encountered.In the lists of suggested readings at the end of chapters are many references to articles in this Journal but the inclusion of rather large and somewhat advanced texts without suggesting at least specific chapters seems of questionable value to the students for whom this textbook is written. Many of the questions at the end of chapters seem quite difficult for a student at this level.The printing, illustrations, and general format of this book are attractive.