Customer Reviews

CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 91st Edition (CRC Handbook of Chemistry & Physics)

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While the first reviewer is correct concerning the Handbook's comprehensive and encyclopedic nature, I doubt it would make for a comfortable pillow.

The Chemical Rubber Company issues its 88th edition of authoritative listings of Fundamental Physical Constants and other scientific data necessary for university and professional research. The Handbook is broken up into 16 Sections followed by two appendices and an index, all of which are listed as follows:

Section 1: Basic Constants, Units, and Conversion Factors

Section 2: Symbols, Terminology, and Nomenclature

Section 3: Physical Constants of Organic Chemistry

Section 4: Properties of the Elements and Inorganic Compounds

Section 5: Thermochemistry, Electrochemistry, and Kinetics

Section 6: Fluid Properties

Section 7: Biochemistry

Section 8: Analytical Chemistry

Section 9: Molecular Structure and Spectroscopy

Section 10: Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

Section 11: Nuclear and Particle Physics

Section 12: Properties of Solids

Section 13: Polymer Properties

Section 14: Geophysics, Astronomy, and Acoustics

Section 15: Practical Laboratory Data

Section 16: Health and Safety Information

Appendix A: Mathematical Tables

Appendix B: Sources of Physical and Chemical Data

It must be said early on that this Handbook is not intended to provide any type of tutorial on the topics, but is the product of many experiments from among the various fields mentioned in the listed sections above. The Handbook is a collection of scientific facts and values to be used for calculations and experiments. (The reviewer for the 87th edition of the Handbook rated it 4 stars because the tome failed to give his son good explanations for phenomena in chemistry--again, that is not the Handbook's purpose.)

Therefore, I am probably preaching to the choir with regard to those who will actually purchase the current edition. All others uninterested in chemistry & physics research, as well as up-to-date information on scientific data, will probably want to steer clear of such an expensive pillow. Nevertheless, those that are interested will be grateful for the depth and scope of work done to produce the best sets of tables, data, and constants so that we can frutifully carry out our own personal research.

The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is the one indispensable handbook that any college level science library must have. In my own career in analytical chemistry research and development, this is the book that I most frequently consulted. While a CRC Handbook may be put to good use for many years, I recommend that larger science-oriented libraries update their current version with a new CRC Handbook periodically.

If you have any use for the practical aspects of chemistry, this book is for you. Want to know how to fractionate pyroligneous acid to obtain methanol and acetone? Or how to separate different metals from foundry dross and scrap alloys? Or why you can't store fluorides in glass? Just look up the chemical and physical properties of the compounds in this book. It is definitely a must-have if you work in the reclamation industry. Information on the physical properties of metals and semimetallic elements is also contained in this book, essential for metallurgical engineers. I own an edition from 1976, but even the outdated one in my collection is indispensable. I thoroughly recommend it.

One might presume that the internet might have overcome the need for the Chemical Rubber Company (CRC) Handbook for Chemistry and Physics. I think this is an error. The internet is great for specific stuff (unit conversions, physical chemistry characteristics, etc) but ... the internet lacks a dimension for internalizing linear and non-linear relationships. The reference book provides a different context. The Handbook for Chemistry and Physics is simply a long lived, necessary masterpiece.

I have been using the 51st edition, circa 1970-1971 ... obviously for too many years. I bought it in grad school. It was not printed on acid free paper ... it's crumbling and I have dawg-eared, hilited and tabbed it into complete submission. I pulled it out the other day in a meeting and my younger engineers and physicists laughed at my 'so 20th century' ways. I understood, I was from a generation that learned with slide rules and could hardly imagine the miracle of the HP-10c to overcome arithmetic's tyranny over science.

So, after being laughed at, I bought the 91st edition. I must have been rich in grad school days (LOL). The reference is expensive. I assume it was comparatively expensive in my university day. It will take some time to familiarize myself with the resources contained within the 91st edition. I was just getting comfortable with the 51st edition too.

This is a great reference book that includes everything you will need in your Chemistry classes. I have consulted this book and I use as a reference to all my lab reports and research projects, since it is really organized, easy to use and quite useful for almost everything science-related. A new edition comes out each year, so it is advisable to check current editions to see if there is a change on the information it contains, but otherwise, a "must-have" handbook for every Chemistry major!

Google, Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Mathworld, Wikipedia... specialist websites like NIST might have made reference works obsolete. The CRC Handbook is not endangered. If you work or play in the physical sciences, there will be day after day when you need the beast. Immediacy has admittedly diminished. Buy an updated edition every five or so years. If you do not have a CRC, there will be bad days.

This is an item you would not expect any big surprise, in contrary, you expect information to evolve and develop smoothly as years pass by. The huge handbook fulfils almost any expectation you might have in the field of physical and/or chemical data. Long-year friend of mine.

What can I say ? Anyone who has ever used one of these will tell you it is an idispencable reference.

Great as a reference book for a lot of different areas of science and even some math.

This is a comprehensive, encyclopedic listing of a whole lot of data! Very useful, and if you can't use it, it's big so you could use it as like a pillow or something.