Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews Fundamentals of Chemical Kinetics by S. R. Logan Longman: Harlow, England, 1996 (reprinted). xii + 264 pp. ISBN 0582-251850. $35.63. reviewed by Frank Wilkinson
The availability of a reprint of this book is to be welcomed because it deals with many aspects of the subject in a clear, straightforward manner and serves as a very good introduction to reaction kinetics for undergraduates in chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering. The treatment is concise and there is a very wide coverage, including chapters on homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, on chain reactions, on relaxation and other advanced techniques, on photochemistry and radiation chemistry, and on reaction dynamics, as well as the usual chapters expected in undergraduate textbooks on chemical kinetics. The author strikes an excellent balance between experiment and theory. Unlike authors of many other relatively short undergraduate texts on this subject, this author does not restrict his examples to a single phase, but
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discusses examples from reactions in the gas phase, in solution, and on the surface of solid catalysts. The author is to be congratulated on managing such a wide coverage and yet dealing with topics in sufficient depth to allow understanding by readers who are meeting the subject for the first time. The essential features of experimental methods for determining rate constants and of quantitative theories of chemical kinetics are helpfully explained, as are almost all important aspects of reaction kinetics, including unimolecular reactions in the gas phase and bimolecular reactions in solution. Each chapter ends with a suggested reading list of books and review articles, which students can easily use as a reference source to obtain further information on various topics of interest. There is also a set of problems at the end of each chapter, the answers to which are given at the end of the book. An understanding of reaction kinetics is central to chemical knowledge, and undergraduate as well as some postgraduate students will find this book a valuable starting point for studies concerning chemical kinetics. Frank Wilkinson is in the Department of Chemistry, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 77 No. 3 March 2000 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
