Customer Reviews

Quantitative Chemical Analysis

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

One of the best written textbooks in any area of chemistry. Here is a measure of the quality of this book. When I was graduate school, most of our research group owned a copy of Harris and we kept it on our shelves for handy reference. We had all purchased it as undergraduates but kept it because we LIKED it and found it so darn useful. It is an excellent general reference for anybody whose work involves chemical analysis. The tables of acid dissociation constants and redox half-potentials are some of the most extensive you will find any textbook.

When I first started teaching, I used Skoog & West on the basis of my predecessor's recommendation. However, during my first semester, I found myself constantly referring to Harris because of its clear explainations and good examples. In the second semester, I conducted a head-to-head competition with students reading a chapter on the same material from both Harris and from Skoog. The overwhelming student preference was for Harris and I have used it in my classes ever since. Readers who don't like Harris aren't going to be happy with any analytical chemistry textbook.

This book has become the new standard for both quantatitive and instrumental analysis courses. Goodby, Skoog!

The textbook (in different editions) has been used for our Quantatitive Analysis course for several years, with excellent results.

I am currently adopting it for my Instrumental Methods of Analysis course. Although I will need to suppliment some material (FTNMR is not covered, for example), the main important instrumental techniques ARE covered very well - straight and to the point!

As for the prior poor reviews, well the problem seems to me to be in the student, not the textbook!

Jeez, I can't believe some people don't like this text! It's always been one of my faves, and ditto for my colleagues! In all the years I was in school, I never ran across a text that was written with such a friendly tone, and simultaneously discussed difficult concepts so clearly. Harris' discussions of acid/base and complexometric chemistry is particularly nice, and he even goes out of his way to discuss the preparation of around 30 a/b indicator solutions. Not something you'd find in every text! The problems given at the end of each chapter were great and usually very fun to do (as opposed to Pchem problems, which always made me want to shoot myself). The new edition (1998) was a nice expansion of the previous ones, and I can't recommend it highly enough. BRAVO, Daniel!

The first few chapters of the text, on error analysis are the most important chapters of the entire book. His presentation of propagation of error is excellent.

When I first bought this textbook I was rather intimidated by the dark, foreboding cover. However, when I got into it I found it was my favorite textbook to read. It is written in a conversational tone that is no less effective in teaching the concepts and skills of analytical chemistry. Harris also interjects short sections at the end of some of the chapters on interesting facts in chemical history, like "The Smallest Titration" and "The Largest Voltaic Cell." I will definitely keep it to use for review in my graduate studies.

I respect all reviews, but in my opinion, It is very important the Professor in order the student can feel comfortable in the class, for this reason I think some customer reviews of this book (before the first time I placed my review by 17-august-2000) are biased. In my opinion this book is very good, one of the best among several analytical chem. books, even though its CD could be improved a lot. However, if anybody wants to learn about Analytical chemistry, in general, this book is an excellent reference. It takes some European style for some classic topics in analytical chemistry (e.g. equilibrium)which is pretty good. Topics about analytical chemistry instrumentation have a good level and are updated (according the time that the book was published).

Not very much to say.
This book contains very few and very badly explained topics. Moreover, it makes you lose the thread by dwelling on useless and long examples.
It's really not worth the money and the time you'd spend buying and studying on this book.

I found it very useful for my analytical chemistry class this semester and I know I will need it for the future.

It never came in the mail. If it were more than $5.00 I wouldve complained but I just bought it from the bookstore for $80 instead.

This book managed to make even the most simple chemical analysis concepts extremely complex. The diagrams were confusing, and the explanations were garbled with the overuse of variables (to the point that I had to constantly flip back in the text to try to remember what each variable meant). Many of the problems/answers had mistakes in them (or were beyond the scope of the class).

The publishing company, in their typical style, published in that sickly blue spot color, with no other color (except the color platelette in the center of the book).

Though bad teaching was certainly also to blame for my difficulty in this class (I still managed to get a B), certainly this book selection was a significant factor as well.