;Pecent ~4 neither tho bleak au~ten t \ . of some of the

of exercises and reading assignments seems adequate though shoprvorn. While chapters have been rearranged and cam- bined and sections deleted or rewritten. friends of the previous editions will he disappointed to see mostly the same old exercises. The hook appears to this re- viewer to be highly readable, an india- pensable quality in any textbook for the beginning course. The appendix includes a table of &place logarithms, solubility products, solubilities ai salts, vapor pres- sures of water, metric units, and a review of arithmetic.

JACK W. EICHINGER, JR. F~orno* STATE UNIVER~IY TALLABABSEE, F L O R ~ A

INTRODUCTORY CHEMISTRY

Otto W. Nitz, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Stout State College, Wiscon- sin. D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., Princeton, 1956. viii + 520 pp. 15 tables. 15 X 23 om. $5.75.

A C C ~ ~ D I N G to Jules Verne, Captain Nemo in the year 1866 sailed his Nautilus twenty thousand leagues under the sea. He used sodium to make it go. On page 324 of the volume being reviewed, we learn that todav's Nautilus also uses so-

great many practical applications to arouse interest, especially in the last quarter of his text which follows the chap- ter on organic chemistry. Unfortunately, few of the students taking chemistry for "cultural" purposes have developed an absorbing interest in technology 80 that other devices should be employed if a di- rect interest in the study of chemistry is to be developed.

Stripped of vagueness and ambiguity, the ides, that liberal arts students can study chemistry with profit means that chemistry has an intelleotual content. That is to say, it typifies one of the ex- tremely successful ways that civilized man has used to cope with his environment. Basically, this power has come from under- standing which makes possible prediction and control. Long-lasting lacquers and soapless soaps have come along with this understanding, hut from the point of view of the teacher the understanding of chem- istry is the important thing. This means that in a textbook for the general student an interest in the subject must first be aroused, znd then the outlines of the sub- ject must be presented as vividly and as clearly as possible. The clearest presen- tation is one that sets before the reader the relationship of one part of the subject to another so that he is able to see how the members of the framework are linked.

I n the present book the relationships are all there of course, but only b,v impli- cation. For example, on pages 181-2

(Continued on page Ales)

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there is an excellent explanation of pH. However, the relationship to Arrhenius theory is not given even though the chap- ter begins with a description of classical ioniaation theory. To be useiul to the student who will study no more chemistry, his textbook should also help him to see links between pH and: the periodic system, the atomic theory, the kinetic molecular theory, and the electron the- ory

BENTLEY EDWARDS U ~ r v m s 1 ~ 7 or C*~rronrr* B ~ ~ K ~ L E Y . C*~lronm*

LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS IN GENERAL CHEMISTRY

G. Brooks King, Professor of Chemistry, State College of Washington, and William E. Coldwell, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Oregon State College. American Book Company, New York, 1956. ix + 324 pp. 48 figs. 21 X 27.5 cm. Paper bound. $3.25.

THE manual consists of 65 experiments arranged to accompany the authors' text, "The Fundamentals of College Chemistry"; however, the experiments are of such nature as to allow a marked degree of flexibility in the choice of order and number. Most o m be com- pleted in from two to three hours. A reasonable number are quantitative in nature. A brief treatment of qualitative analysis is included in the last eight ex- periments and these could be incorpo- rated into the regular sequence of experi- ments.

The reviewer was aamewhat disap- pointed in the brief and inadequate dis- cussion of the use of the balance and in the tendency for the labomtor.v manual to follow the "work book format" so common to a great majority of the manuals cur- rently being published.

Included in the appendix are helpful tables on common properties of the ele- ments, valences, solubility rules, activity series, and equipment and chemical lists required for the experiments.

THOMAS C. VAN OSDALL

SANTA AN* COLLEQE S*NT* AN*, C*IIIORNI*

WORKBOOK AND EXPERIMENTS FOR COLLEGE CHEMISTRY

David P. Marble, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Wisconsin State College. Bur- gess Publishing Co., Minneapolis, 1956. vi + 116 pp. 21 X 27.5 Em. Paper bound. $3.50.

THIS 11~bomtory m&nual O O ~ S ~ S ~ S of 33 experiments divided into 5 units of work: (1) Introduction to Chemistry, (2) Chemi- cal Notation, (3) Gases, (4) Water and Solutions, and (5) Classification of Ele- ments and Compounds. Following each of the experiments is a list of exercises, a. review of pertinent basic concepts, and

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