book reviews Someone has finally written down what everyone has to know ta work effectively and sdely with air-sensitive compounds. There can be little question but that this book will he a. classic for some time to come, as was Stock's hook. The hook is really excellent in every respect. There is certainly a p e s t need for this hook and I highly recommend i t ta every synthetic inorganic and organometallic chemist. Shriver's comments and evaluations of equipment sueh as dry boxes and techniques sueh as Schlenk tube operations could only have been made by an expert. Finally, this book gets down to the nitty-gritty concerning the exact details of construction of msjor and minor pieces of apparatus needed in the manipulation of air-sensitive comoounds. Instead of
inorganic and organometallic chemistry by writing such s. finebook. I have recommended to all of my gradus t e students that they buy this book, study it, and use it as their laboratory bible in tho operations and handling of air-sensitive systems. E. C. Asnnv Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia
lon-Selective Electrodes Edited by Richard A. Durst, Institute for Materials Research, National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C. NBS Publicat,ion, 1969. (For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office.) xxii 452 pp. Figs. and tables. 15.5 X 23.5 em. 83.60.
+
The development of ion-selective electrode potentiometry has occorred largely during the past five years, although the archetypal iion-selective electrode, the pHresponsive glav, electrode, has been with 11s for over sixty v e ~ r s . R ~ D O I of ~ Sion electrodes for various ions other than hydrogen and sodiom became commercially available only in 1966. Today there are electrodes for about twenty different anions or cations on the market. The present volume, the proceedings of s. January 1969 ~ymposinmsponsored by the National Bureau of Standards, is the first thorough general review of ion-selective electrodes to appear. Roughly equal coverage is given to discussion of the nature of ion-selective electrodes and to their application to various problems. There is some overlap, perticolarly in the discussion of the flouride electrode. There are very few serious errors. Literature coverage is complete through 1968 and there are some references to papers in early 1969.
A722 1 Journol of Chemicol Education
The introductory chapter by G. Eisenman provides a concise summary of the thmry of ion-selective electrode potentials and a. good description of glasses and macrocyclic antibiotics as cation exchangers. The mathematical develapment is left to appendices, where i t can be ignored by the faint of heart. J. Ross's chapter discusses the materials used as ion exchangers in most of the commercially available electrodes and includes clear drawings of the physical arrangement of such electrodes. There is a. eoad disous-
scribes heterogeneous membrane electrodes. These have proven, for the most part., les? sat,isfactory than other types and are not widely used in this country. Dr. Covington has also contributed aehapter on reference electrodes. Various electrodes are described in addibion to the familiar calomel and silver-silver chloride electrodes, and the problems of liquid junction potential, temperature hysteresis, and temperature dependence are discussed in detail. J. Butler and R. Bates discuss the problems associated with making Betivity measurements with available electrodes. Dr. Butler describes equilibrium const,ant and activity coefficient studies possible with ion-selective electrodes, while Dr. Bates addresses h i m d f to the problem of defining activity coefficients for various ions. This problem is a formidable one, largely because ionic strength variations usually accompany changes in ion activity. As Dr. Bates point,s out, changes in ionic strengt,h change not only activity coefficients, but also liquid junction potentials, and the latter may vary more than they do in routine pH measurements. Two chapters, by R. Khuri and by E. Moore describe bio-medical applications. Dr. Khuri gives s general review of the field, while Dr. Moore describes in detail applications of the calcium ion electrode. The utility of ion selective electrodes in medicine is clear even to the lavman. I t he a welcome advance. The remaining chapters by G. Rechnitz, T. Light, and R. Durst summarise appliescations to problems more familiar to chemists. Dr. Itechnitz touches upon the question of electrode response time, which can be quite long, and discusses in detail studies of equilibrium constants and rate constants for some precipitation and com~ l e xformation reactions. Dr. Light describes the use of potentiometry for control and monitoring of industrial processes. Relatively little has been done, but such applications look qnite promising. Dr. Durst provides a general survey of analytioal applications. That ion-selective electrodes are of interest thronghoot the scientific and technical world is demanstrated by Durst's collectian of references from workers in agriculture, biology, medicine, geology, oceanography, and several branches of chemistry. I n summsry, the book is an up to date and readable summsry of an important growing area. of analytical chemistry. I t is highly recommended to anyone whose
interests include the chemistry of aqueous solutions.
MICHAEL D. MORRIS University o j Michigan Ann A~bor,Michigan
Physical Chemidry Problems and Solutions Leonard C. Labmttz, Stern College for Women, Yeshiva. University, New Yark, and John S. AmUs, City College of the City University of New York. Academic Press, Inc., New Yark, 1969. x 524 pp. Figs. and tables. 15.5 X 23 om. Softbound. $7.50.
+
The first part of this hook contains the problemstatementsaf 590problems. The second part consists of rather complete solntians to the problems. The solutions proceed from a statement of a familiar formula with any derivation or rearrangement for the particular case to numerical expressions and .calculated results. The book does not contain m y text material other than the problems and solutions. The problems are arranged in 16 chept,ers by subject matt,ef, and they are further subdivided into Seotions I, 11, and I11 of graded difficulty. The authors intend the book far advanced undergraduates and graduate students. This estimate of difficultyis reasonable: usually Section I problems are of appropriate difficulty for second or third year undergraduate courses, while the problems in Sections I1 and 111compare in difficulty to those found in texts for graduate or advanced undergraduate students. The coverage of thermodynamics and it8 applications is most complete covering 9 of the 16 chapters. The section on gases cont,ains a number of problems on nonideal equations of state, and the later chapters a n thermodynamic functions place a heavy stress on calculations taking non-ideal behavior into account. A number of very good thought questions are included on frequently misunderstood topics such as entropy change, reversibility, ete. Some problems which require derivations are rather inventive and give good practicein the use of partial differentials. The treatment of kinetics covers many interesting applications of measurements on reacting systems, but it relies on trial and error methods to determine reaction order even though graphical methods such as the Powell d o t make these methods unnecessary. T'he problems deriving rate laws from mechanisms are quite inventive, but there is not much emphasis on predicting mechanisms to fit rate laws. The problems on quantum chemistry emphasize basic principles rather well in the use of operators and the standard systems such as the particle in a box. The application of quantum mechanics to the interpretation of spectra and molecular wave functions is not well covered. With its numerous literature references the book does represent a significant effort t o bring a collection of rather advanced (Continued on page A724)
