Customer Reviews

The Chemist's Companion: A Handbook of Practical Data, Techniques, and References

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

 

 

"The Chemist Companion" is a must for the laboratory scientist. It is an invaluable resource for everyday questions like recipes for solvent mixtures, cooling baths, cleaning baths, etc. The index is straightforward and easy to use. Much of the information is in easy-to-read tables. Information is referenced and clearly written. A valuable resource!

It should be made clear that this book is geared towards synthetic (particularly organic) chemists. As such, much of the information in this book like drying agents, cleaning mixtures, cooling baths, silica/alumina chromatography are still very much applicable for the practicing synthetic chemist. Other highlights of this book include a good section on spectroscopy (IR frequencies, NMR shifts and coupling constants) as well as atomic and molecular properties (like bond lengths, pKa's, etc.)

That said, this book is old. One of the charts includes a melting point for the "polywater" "discovered" by Soviet scientists in the 70s, which has since become a textbook example of pathological science. It would be nice for this book to be updated.

Apparently the edition I ordered is from the 1960's... that wasn't clearly stated in the description, or maybe I just missed it, but 1960's information has VERY limited utility for me. Not to mention the entire thing appears to have been typed with a typewriter, with no graphics whatsoever, so in addition to being useless it's also ugly. If you want this book MAKE SURE TO CHECK THAT IT'S A NEWER EDITION or you will be sorry.