Chemistry for Beginners

Abstract

AMONG the large number of text-books of elementary chemistry written for the use of schools, this volume will take its place with the very few that are not specially designed to prepare the student for some examination. It is further to be distinguished as having the classification and order of treatment of the elements based upon their periodic arrangement. The author deserves the thanks of those interested in the matter for making this experiment, whether the result be regarded as successful or otherwise. He states in the preface that he hopes “that the method of treating the subject of chemistry adopted in this short sketch may help to demonstrate the value of its study as a training in classification, and as a means of developing the reasoning powers.” Certainly this is desirable, and the volume tends in this direction. We find, for example, the preparation of the elements treated under such headings as “Electrolysis of a Compound,” “Decomposition of a Compound by Heat,” &c., and there is much advantage in comparing the processes that serve for the isolation of the elements in this manner. But the first aim of a knowledge of chemistry is not to develop the reasoning powers. It is rather to give the student more exact ideas than he would otherwise have of the constitution and properties of matter, and it is important to get into his mind not simply the relationships that substances bear to one another, but a definite idea of each substance and its properties. We think that an inspection of the volume before us will confirm the experience of the past that an elementary textbook does well to aim, above all things, at presenting a distinct, and, as far as may be, complete description of each substance, leaving the classification of methods and reactions to the judgment of the teacher or the ingenuity of the student when it is impossible to include both aspects of the matter. Taking oxygen as an example, we are in the habit of finding a chapter in which the methods that serve for its preparation, and its more important properties are set forth in a connected and convenient manner. But in this volume the directions for the preparation of oxygen occupy a few paragraphs in a chapter entitled “Decomposition of a Compound by Heat,” at p. 73, while the properties of oxygen are not described till we get to p. 93. To say the least of it, it would be very inconvenient for a student, after having prepared his oxygen, to busy himself with the preparation of sulphur from pyrites, the preparation of magnesium, aluminium, boron, silicon, hydrogen, several metals, the properties of hydrogen and about seventeen metals, besides boron, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and arsenic, before he comes to a practical investigation of the properties of his oxygen.

Elementary Systematic Chemistry for the Use of Schools and Colleges.

By William Ramsay (London: J. and A. Churchill, 1891.)