Customer Reviews

Principles of Instrumental Analysis, 5th Edition

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I am a graduate student in Analytical Chemistry. This book has been a great resource when I need to look up a speceific topic. I like the fact that it provides references to most topics. They are a great starting point if you want to research that topic. Just look up the references, plug it into SciFinder and see who's been quoting it a lot and then look up his/her latest book or review article on the subject ;)

Forget about this book if you want to use it as a textbook, unless you have a very good instructor who'll provide you with a good overview and pick'n'choose what parts of the book you need to be aquainted with.

I don't think this book was written to be a self-contained, 'read-it-from-beginning' & 'i'll-take-your-hand-and-guide-you-though-the-subject' type of a book. So you can't blame it for what it's not meant to be. This is the type of a book you need to pick up with an established purpose or question in your mind. Then you'll consider it to be a valuable resource. If you pick it up just as a beginning student in the field, you'll absolutely hate it with a serious passion! If you use it as I suggest, it will take an honored place in your library. I have the deepest respect for authors of this book and am very thankful for providing me with such a strong tool in my career.

Another great book I'd put in the same category is
Spectrometric Identification of Organic Compounds
by Robert M. Silverstein, Francis X. Webster, David Kiemle
(6th edition)

As an undergrad chemistry major at James Madison University, I was required to purchase this text for my senior level instrumental methods class. Fortunately, my professor was one of the co-authors to a previous edition of this book and was able to point out many of the editing flaws in this text before they became a problem. But any good book has its problems. I found it increasingly frustrating that some of the diagrams were mislabeled, or labeled with information of questionable accuracy and/or value. Additionally, the book is written in an extremely dull fashion. Well, you may be saying "this is chemistry, its supposed to be dull and boring!" I would tell you that is the absolute untruth! I have read many technical manuals and texts which cover not only difficult material, but present it in an easily readable fashion. This COULD be a fabulous book if the authors would proofread the newest version themselves and correct some of the errors. A large portion of this book is devoted to the accuracy of data and the maximization of signal to noise ratio. With this in mind I find it disturbing that a book which so advocates this has so many errors in it!

I'm a graduate student retaking Instrumental Analysis. Fortunately for me, I have the fouth addition to reference. As a student, I'm required to do homework from various chapters. In doing this, I've found numerous reference errors within the problem sets. This makes problem solving difficult (to say the least). It seems as though the proof readers only read the material and did not try to solve any of the problems. The written text is better than the older edition; however, I've still found equational errors. In the end, I'm forced to use both editions. Finally, I will give credit to the amount of useful information within the text. I find that portion of the book highly informative and relatively detailed.

Despite some errors, this is STILL the only REAL instrumental methods book on the market - if you want to see REALLY BAD books, look at the competitors! In terms of presenting instrumental theory, describing in detail the instruments and their operation, and providing detailed drawings of the instruments and components, this book has no peer. That's why it is used for more Instrumental Methods courses than all other books combined, and why I continue to choose it for my students.

As a Senior Undergraduate Chemistry student, I was required to buy this book as a text for an instrumental analysis class. I had heard great things about previous editions, and I figured that with a fifth edition, most of the kinks had been worked out.

However, to my dismay, the book was not released until four weeks into the semester, and when it was, I dropped a cumbersome wad of cash for a substandard book that had apparently skipped the proofreading stage to get the book out to the bookstores (probably so that the author could once again line his pockets with cash). There are erroneous equations (albeit subtle mistakes, but those can be the deadliest), misplaced chapter headings, and a myriad of confusing ordering of the chapter, just to name a few things that I felt were below average about this book. When all was said and done, and the course was over, I gladly took it back to the bookstore to sell it back for a whopping loss, and it didn't even phase me.

My suggestion: Go out to a used bookstore and see if you can find an earlier edition. I would imagine that those were actually proofread.

This book is pretty much standard for undergrad analytical chemistry but it is not a great text. It provides a very basic introduction to analytical methods in a poorly organised fashion. The information is presented in such a way that it calls for you to memorize rather than understand. The mathematics presented confuse the reader more than they help. I recommend you buy this used. If you plan on pursuing analytical chemistry, this book will quickly be shoved aside to make way for much better books, each specific to a particular instrumental method.

I was not impressed when I first started using this book for my Instrumental class. The information that is given correctly is very well done. However, there are so many errors that it outweighs the usefulness of the book. I realize that all books are going to have errors but this is horrible. The sixth edition of this book is much better and doesn't have the same mistakes that the fifth edition does. If you are looking to buy this book get the sixth edition.

Aside from the blatant errors in the text, the book is a fair intro to modern instruments. Skoog manages to explain most everything enough to understand, but then goes into the mathematics behind the machines. The explanations are not detailed enough to understand. The additional explanations do nothing but confuse the text. If one is able to wade through the confusion, the book is not bad. In a later edition, Skoog would be wise to add more explanations to facilitate understanding, or remove them entirely.

After having used this particular edition for two semesters of Instrumental Analysis .... I can honsestly say that this book is not worth the money or the headache of trying to decipher it. The book was very disorganized as far as subject placement is concerned and it contains errors throughout. I have heard that earlier edditions were much better and through limited use I can say that there are no aparent errors and the 3rd and 4th editions are much easier to understand. If you are buying this for a class don't expect to gather anything that you can understand without using an additional source and don't expect to get any money for it.

I'm not sure why there are so many negative reviews of this book. I found it to be very solid when I used the 3rd edition.

For those of you who don't like it you have 4 options:

1. "Instrumental Methods of Analysis" by Willard, Merritt, Dean, Settle; (ISBN 0534081428) which is excellent and a true classic. It's OOP now but a new edition comes out in 2012.

2. "Chemical Analysis: Modern Instrumentation Methods and Techniques" by Francis Rouessac & Annick Rouessac

3. "Undergraduate Instrumental Analysis" Sixth Edition by James W. Robinson, Eileen M. Skelly Frame, George M. Frame II

4. "Chemical Instrumentation: A Systematic Approach" by Strobel and Heineman. This book is very hardware oriented and is not a true general instrumental analysis text.

I'd also recommend that you buy "Statistics and Chemometrics for Analytical Chemistry" by James N. Miller & Jane C. Miller. It does a much better job than the cursory chapters found in regular analytical texts. Get the 4th or 5th edition. For a paperback, this book is ridiculously expensive if you buy new. Try to find a used copy.

While the book by Miller & Miller is good, it's no substitute for a 1 or 2 semester course in stats. A good book for this material might be Statistics for Research, Third Edition by Shirley Dowdy, Stanley Wearden, Daniel Chilko (ISBN 047126735X)

Check out my other reviews for other undergrad. chem books.

I notice one of the co-authors (Crouch) has added his comments. He says "This book remains the leader in the field." - not difficult when there are so few competitors!