Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline of Analytical Chemistry

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

 

 

I own many, many Schaum's Outlines, and am satisfied with all of them. However, before you buy this outline of Analytical Chemistry or any of the other Schaum's Outlines, you need to ask yourself what your needs are. If you are looking for a brief review of a subject, you should look elsewhere. If you are taking a course in Analytical Chemistry and need a little help with some areas of it, you should look elsewhere--preferably, ask someone with a thorough grasp of the subject to explain those areas to you.

The Schaum's Outlines are best used as a self-study tool. Let's face it, reviewing an entire subject and solving all the problems to gain a solid grasp on the material is difficult and time-consuming, and I suspect few students already enrolled in a course will have the extra time to rehash what they've already been told by reading through a Schaum's Outline, and few will want to go through so many problems--at least in my courses, the problems we are provided are too much to begin with.

For review purposes, Schaum's may help some students. However, since you need to know what your course will test you on specifically, you would need to go through the outline along with your notes. Therefore, spending more time reviewing your course notes might be a better use of your time.

Schaum's Outlines are essentially cheaply made textbooks, and, as with other texts, the writing varies widely from one book in the series to another. If a cheap self-study of a course is what you seek, or you'd like to preview a course you plan to take, by all means go with Schaum's. If you are a student looking for help with a subject, seek it elsewhere.

I gave this book 5 stars because it explains different topics based on electrochemistry, pH, precipitation, potentiometry, etc., and how they relate amongst themselves. The book really gets deep and provides plenty of examples and exercises to master the topics.

That was the good part, now I have to tell you that paying as much time as this book requires is not worth it. I have worked as an Analytical Chemist for three years where I have always been searching which technologies most laboratories and companies use. I also got a M.S. in the field and have taken a deep look at the job market around the world. After all this experiences, I hardly find a place where they would ask more than just taking pH of samples and some titrations that do not require the deep knowledge of this book. It is High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Gas Chromatography (GC), Atomic Absorption (AA) and spectroscopy (especially UV/Vis) the ruling technologies.

For some reason the academic communities have been really careless about the skills chemistry students need in analytical labs. Most analytical chemistry book deal deeply with electrochemistry topics and most schools have students study them rather deep. The chromatographic techniques are not usually given the importance they require. They regard them easy topics and too many books that do mention HPLC and GC cover too much on equilibrium theory and more useless topics. And the same academic communities are rather incongruent because too much electrochemistry is not very useful in the chemistry subject GRE.

The book explains all the concepts regarding analytical chemistry in a very lucid manner,which makes it a very easy to understand book. The way in which the book deals with the problems in analytical chemistry is noteworthy.If only the coverage would have been deeper my rating would have been 5 star.Still a must read book for who want to get started and get a feel of problems related to the subject of analytical chemistry.

The book introduces equations which have variables which are named poorly and lead to confusion.

The book was very helpfull. Covered most of the topics covered in class. Very self explanitory text and very easy to understand.

If you are looking for a means to review for a graduate school exam in analytical chemistry, look elsewhere. The material covered in an undergraduate general chemistry textbook is much better for review purposes. For those actually taking the class, I cannot comment on this books' utility.