minations in the mast efficient manner.
It gives the authors' advice in a very comon decisions by which they had to stand. They are members of one of the foremost industrial research organizations, the Shell Development Company of Emeryville, California, and their interests are clearly in using these methods as tools in their work. Hence they are concerned not only with the accuracy and precision of s. determination but also with the total time elqming before a result becomes available, with the man hours consumed in each determination, and especially with the most significant way of interpreting the experimental results. The book is addressed primarily to those who wish to make moleculilr weight deter-
plete and easy-to-follow manner with a minimum left to the reader's judgment. The explanations are included, but they are rather concise and oocassionally cryptic. For anyone who considers undertaking a molecular weight determination this book will be invaluable as a source of practical suggestions. An example is the method recommended for weighing out small amounts of highly viscous liquids. A drop of the liquid is allowed to fall on a, tared aluminum tray containing a layer of talc. The tray is rewaighed, the drop covered with more talc and then handled with tongs! Another example is a rather simple procedure for least-square fitting to
quadratic or cubic equations when the concentrations measured are equally spaced. This book may also be an eye-opener for those in the ivory towers who had no contact with the high grade industrial service laboratory of which it is the product.
KLROL J. MYSELS Unive~sityoj Soulhem California Los Angeles Vinyl Resins
W . Mayo Smith, Director, Research and Development, Escambia Chemical Corporation, Wilton, Conn. Reinhold Publishing Carp., New York, 1958. vii 282 pp. 13.5 X 19.5 cm. $5.75.
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The Reinhold Plastics Application Serics is continued with this volume which deals with the very large field of vinyl resins. Since this erouo is comoosed of a lame
to making a survey rather than dealing deeply with its topic. Extensive data are given on production and prices of the resins over reeent years, on the various types of resins avdilable, their properties (both physical and chemical), and on their most common applications. A rather extensive chapter on New Developments gives an indication of the possible future of the field. This Series is directed toward the technically oriented industrial man. As such it will be of most interest educationally for use with chemical engineering and industrial engineering courses.
THOMAS E. FERINGTON The College of Wooster W w ~ l e r Ohio , The Science of High Explorives
Melvin A . Cook, Professor of Metallurgy, University of Utah. Reinhold Publishing Carp., New York, 1958. xv 440 pp. Many figs. and tables. 18 X 26 om. $22.50.
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This book is s n excellent addition t o the American Chemical Society's series of monographs. I t is typical of the policy followed in more recent years, that these should give "more complete and criticel treatment of relatively restricted areas." There is thorough coverage of modern explosives and of instrumentation and methods for testing these; of various aspects of detonation such as its initiation and velocity of propagation, the ionization or electrical and magnetic effects which may accompany it, and the mechanism of propagation in terms of reaction products and rates and thermo-hydrodynamic theory; and of related special topics. Some of the lattelcsuch as elastic properties of solids, principles of shaped charges, and damage potential of blast waves may seem somewhat far afield from chemistrv: . , but.. as the author notes in his orefw, the l u i i d of d i e m ~ I~l . in~) t~~ ~~ l1s~ ~ t ~ f that of the pl+&.ul vJwui.i~ryof 113ta dttunating explosives.
(Continued on page A316)
A3 14
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Journal o f Chemical Education
