Abstract
THIS work is intended to be placed in the hands of the student who is commencing quantitative analysis, and hence the first eleven exercises deal with general elementary determinations, after which he will take up that portion of the book which deals with his special requirements. Schemes are then given for the analysis of coal and coke, iron ores, water, both for sanitary and technical purposes, of coal, oil, producer and flue gases, iron and steel, cement, building materials, paper, soap, lubricating oils, paint and asphalt. On account of the wide scope of the book, the author has secured special articles from experts on blast furnace practice, boiler tests, carbon compounds of iron, practical photometry, electrical units and energy equivalents. As must necessarily be the case from the size of the book and the variety of subjects dealt with, the work is written in a very compressed style throughout, so much so, in fact, that it is scarcely a suitable work to put in the hands of “students commencing quantitative analysis.” The large amount of practical information in it, however, will render it a useful work of reference for chemists engaged in engineering work. In some respects there is room for improvement. The superabundance of decimal places in numerical results, which is, unfortunately, characteristic of American technical literature, is very much in evidence. Thus in an analysis of water for technical purposes, the constituents of which, on account of their minuteness, are weighed with an accuracy of about two, or at the most three, significant figures, in the final statement of results no less than five places are given. An even more striking case is in the section on calorimetry, in which the water equivalent of a calorimeter is laboriously worked out to six significant figures, 203·460, the experimental result being casually given as 227·22. Another example, is in the determination of the heating value of a gas, the result being expressed as 10726·7 B.T.U. per pound. The section on photometry is somewhat out of date, no mention being made of any standard of light other than the sperm candle. The chapter on pyrometry and many of the numerical data also require bringing up to date, many of the tables and calculations being based upon the weight of a litre of hydrogen taken as 0·08958. A noteworthy feature, and one adding considerably to the value of the book, is the introduction of a short bibliography at the end of each special chapter. It is curious to note that in some cases recent papers of importance are given as references, but ignored in the text. This is especially noticeable in the chapter on pyrometry.
Engineering Chemistry.
A manual of Quantitative Chemical Analysis for the use of Students, Chemists and Engineers. Second Edition. By Thomas B. Stillman. Pp. 503. (Easton, Pa.: The Chemical Publishing Co., 1900.)
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Engineering Chemistry . Nature 63, 561 (1901). https://doi.org/10.1038/063561a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/063561a0