Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews Nuclear and Radiochemistry: Fundamentals and Applications, 2nd, Revised Edition by Karl Heinrich Lieser Wiley-VCH: Weinheim, 2001. 440 pp. ISBN 3-527-30317-0. $145.00. reviewed by Curtis R. Keedy
It has been a number of years since a new text in nuclear and radiochemistry has been widely available in this country. The last major text with this title was by Friedlander, Kennedy, Macias, and Miller, published in 1981—20 years ago! This is the second edition of this text; I have not seen the first edition, which was published in 1997. On checking back issues of JCE, I found no review of the earlier edition so I am assuming that it was not generally available in this country. One of the reasons that there have been few new texts in this area is that the field is not very popular with students these days and courses in radiochemistry are not taught often in colleges and universities. However, with the recent power shortages, particularly in the western region of the U.S., talk of building nuclear power plants is reviving because of their low emissions of greenhouse gases in the generating process. This development may, in turn, generate more student interest in nuclear and radiochemistry. Certainly an updated text in this field is long overdue. Dr. Lieser is a professor of chemistry at the Eduard Zintl Institut in Darmstadt, Germany, and this text is based on his 40 years of teaching and research in the field. The book is divided into 22 relatively short chapters that cover quite adequately both fundamental principles and applications to various fields. As Lieser says in his preface, the book is “mainly addressed to chemists desiring sound information about this branch of chemistry dealing with the properties of radioactive matter”. The application areas include radioanalysis, radiodating, radiotracers, nuclear energy, industrial applications, and geochemistry and cosmochemistry. The fundamentals covered include the usual topics such as radioactive decay, radiation detection and measurement, nuclear reactions, and radiation dosimetry and protection. The last topic is the last chapter in the text and should have been included much earlier in the chapter sequence—probably following Chapter 7, Measurement of Nuclear Radia-
tion. Also included with the text is the 1998 revision of the Chart of the Nuclides, which is very useful. Lieser uses a very compact, direct writing style. As an example, here is a quote from the section on the discovery of radioactivity: Radioactivity was discovered in 1896 by Henri Bequerel, who investigated the radiation emitted by uranium minerals. He found that photographic plates were blackened in the absence of light, if they were in contact with the minerals. Two years later (1898) similar properties were discovered for thorium by Marie Curie in France and G. C. Schmidt in Germany. That radioactivity had not been discovered earlier is due to the fact that human beings, like animals, do not have sense organs for radioactive radiation. Marie Curie found differences in the radioactivity of uranium and uranium minerals and concluded that the minerals must contain still other radioactive elements. Together with her husband, Pierre Curie, she discovered polonium in 1898, and radium later in the same year.
He briefly discusses topics such as elementary particles and quarks, and the origin of cosmic radiation and how we observe it in the atmosphere. I appreciated his discussion of the natural nuclear reactors at Oklo. These newer topics show his efforts to include current developments and results in the book. The features I have mentioned make this text an excellent one for researchers in a wide variety of fields who need some background in radiochemistry. However, for students who are trying to comprehend the material for the first time, this text may not be so useful. For example, there are no end-of-chapter problems for students to test their understanding of the material presented. As the author states in the preface, “In order to restrict the volume of the book, detailed derivations of equations are avoided and relevant information is compiled in tables, as far as possible.” He does provide a good set of literature references at the end of each chapter, to which the reader can refer for more details. In summary, I would recommend this book as a reference for researchers and educators in a variety of fields. However, unless one has a good file of problems and derivations, it would be hard to recommend this book as a stand-alone text for a course in radiochemistry. Curtis R. Keedy is in the Department of Chemistry, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR;
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 79 No. 1 January 2002 • Journal of Chemical Education
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