Customer Reviews

Aqueous Acid-base Equilibria and Titrations

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a really good book. It teachs how to solve simple acid-base calculations from a crude sketch in the sand, to more advanced cases were you need iterative methods. It's actually more practical and directed against finding the CHEMICAL information than all simpler books I have encountered. It's not an introduction booklet in chemistry; it's more for the somewhat more advanced but still practical uses.
But it's marred with the lack of a really thorough proofreading. If you study the text hard because you need to understand the techniques thoroughly, you will discover what must be "typing errors". And there are diagrams that show one to three curves less than what is descriebed in the text. And none of these curves are numbered, so you can't be sure which curves are overlapped with supporting lines. - This makes the book unnecessary labourous to read.
If these errors are removed in a second edition, the book will deserve 5 stars.
In a book of this type it would also do with a handful of excersises at the end of each chapter, with answers at the end of the book.

It is a very good book, spetially for basic analytical chemistry. It is difficult to find a book where the student can find a lot of examples very well considered. The acid base equibrium is the basis for understanding ionic equilibrium and sometimes you lose inside the mathematical aspects but forgetting the chemical aspects. I recommend this book, not only for students but also for profesors in the subject.

Teaching solution equilibria has always been a difficult task for college professors. Professor de Levie has shown how this subject can be made more palatable for students. This is most clearly demonstrated in his discussion of acid-base titrations. By using spead-sheet techniques and treating pH as an independent rather than dependent variable, titration curves are easily generated without making approximations. de Levie's approach is unique. The popular textbooks dealing with this subject still involve the "old fashioned" approach, which is a pedagogical nightmare. This book is a MUST for all those who teach solution equilibria at the freshman and sophmore levels in colleges and universities. I doubt that it would be a suitable textbook for the students in these courses because of the detail involved. However, the book is highly recommended for courses dealing with solution equilibria at the upper division level.