Abstract
THE present work arose out of the difficulty experienced by the author in attempting to give a thorough course of qualitative analysis in limited time to large classes of students. Of course in a work dealing with so hackneyed a subject anything new must be looked for in the arrangement of the material. It is a common practice to preface the actual analytical separations by a course of test-tube reactions with each metal and acid, with the object of combining a course of systematic inorganic chemistry with the study of analysis. The author prefers to keep the two separate, thinking that the former is better taught by a course of inorganic preparations than by the test-tube reactions, which mostly involve mere questions of solubility. The present course accordingly plunges at once into the separations of the metals, passing on to the wet tests for acids, and concluding with dry tests and an excellent chapter on the preliminary preparation of substances for analysis. The book is intended to be used in the laboratory, and to be accompanied by lectures on, and demonstrations of, the analytical processes. When employed in this way it is thoroughly to be commended. Minute directions are given for carrying out each operation, followed by notes explaining the reason of everything which is done, and the apparently anomalous results which may arise from the neglect of the precautions specified, or from other causes. These notes form a peculiarly excellent feature of the book, and reveal the hand of the experienced teacher. The section on the tests for acids is, perhaps, the least satisfactory, the tests selected being, in the writer's opinion, not invariably the best available.
A Detailed Course of Qualitative Chemical Analysis of Inorganic Substances, with Explanatory Notes.
By Arthur A. Noyes Pp. 89. Third edition. (New York: The Macmillan Company. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1897.)
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A Detailed Course of Qualitative Chemical Analysis of Inorganic Substances, with Explanatory Notes. Nature 56, 612 (1897). https://doi.org/10.1038/056612a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/056612a0