Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews Basic Laboratory Chemistry Films for the Humanities and Sciences: Princeton, NJ, 1997. Videodiscs. $129 per disc or $1895 for set of 16. Further infor mation on this product can be found at http://www.films.com.
E JW Basic Laboratory Chemistry is a series of sixteen programs presenting demonstrations of many processes and experimental techniques used in the chemistry laboratory in both macroscale and microscale. The programs are very well done, each topic being presented clearly and concisely with no fluff. The topics cover the whole range of college chemistry laboratory instruction, particularly organic chemistry. Topics included in the programs are assembling macroscale and microscale apparatus, spectroscopy, chromatography, and procedures such as filtration, extraction, distillation, and titration. I found the programs to be of similar quality to other series from Films for the Humanities and Sciences. The intended audience is definitely college, especially organic chemistry, although a few programs would be applicable to first-year general chemistry. High school chemistry teachers would not find the series very useful because most
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high schools would not have the equipment to perform the laboratory procedures demonstrated. The programs are excellent ancillaries to augment instructor demonstrations of techniques, setups, and processes. Instructor demos would allow more student interaction and questions, plus the ability to see the actual demonstration “up close and personal”. These programs could then be utilized by students for review and study. They would be particularly useful for training teaching assistants and research assistants for their teaching responsibilities and research. I like this series very much. It has a no-nonsense, straightto-the-point approach. The topics range from the simplest, such as folding filter paper, to the complex, such as using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer. It is available in both videocassette and videodisc. The videodisc series includes a booklet with each disc with bar codes. This allows the user to access specific portions of the program. The major drawback is the price. The cost per program and for the entire series is high, especially when the instructor can easily demonstrate most of the procedures. Deborah McCool Penn Cambria High School Cresson, PA
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 7 July 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
