VOL.2, No. 3
RECBNT BOOKS
I
223
Recent Books
Inorganic
Phpisal
Chemistry.
LBDDB. Ginn & Company. xv 463 PP. S4.80.
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H. CARTBoston 1924.
The fir* impreasion one receives when starting to read thir book is that it in more elementary than the usual text in Physical Chemistry. Careful analysis shows that this is not reany so. The information is all there. I t is simply being conveyed more painlessly than is usually the c a r . Strict attention to the business in hand and a scarcity of the "special cases" that make the average text rather awe-inspiring tend t o produce this resuit. Professor Cartledge set out to write a TEACHABLE Physical Chemi3try. He succeeded. Such a rmooth-flowing, logical. interesting book, the critic has seldom read. Practical appiieationo and theory are so intimately interwoven that even the dullest student should be lead to r e "the use of i t all." Specific items that meet the critic's approval are an excellent introductory chapter on "FactReal and Apparent;' an outline of the material covered a t the beginning of eaeh chapter, plenty of problcmo a t the end of eaeh chapter, frequent references t o contemporary authors, and the emphasis placed on practical applications. Continuity is the keynote of this book as evidenced by the following outline: "The Nature of Matter,'. covering atomic and kinetie theories, gases, atomic structure, etc.: "The Nature of S , " we s o ~ ~ t i o n s ;"" ~ ~~t~~~ h ~ of R C ~ ~ ~ O ~where find discussed chemical kinetics, equilibrium. energy changes, eleetromotivc chemistry, etc.; "Applications." There is a most excellent discussion ol atomic weights, 01 ''valence" equilibrium (otherwise electromotive chemistry), and of the solubility product and its applications. If adverse erifieim can be made on this book, it is that all divusrian of the periodic table hps beenomitted and that thechapteron"TheNature of the Atom," covering ouch ~ubjects,ps radioactivity, isotopes, atomic number, atomic disintegrations. etc., is too briel. Prole-r Cartledge purponcly limited himself t o a disc-on of those phenomena that are most intimately eonneeted with Inorgaoie Chemistry. For thir rca-
son he omits dircuooion of the physical properties of liquids and solids, of the vapor pressure of volatile mixtures, and of colloids. This nomewhat limits the use of the book as a reference or ns a t e x t in eollege~where a more extensive course in Physical Chemistry is taught. However this text is undoubtedly a move in the right direction in the teaching of Physical Chemi3try and it is to be hoped that Profersor Cartledge will shortly expand it so as to include the subjects mentioned. MALCOLM M. HAIUND The Humanizing gnowledge. J m e s H m v e r R o s r ~ s o a . George H. Doran co.. New York. 1923. xi 119 pp. $1.50.
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"The American Chemical society has asked the chemist to come forth from his laboratory and tell the story of his achievements to the public through the mediumof the daily press, the magazine article, the popular article and the specially written volume:' T ~ Creviewer knows of no single volume that would as greatly aid the chemist in telling his story as the book under review. Datar Robinson in the preface says, "When bilk are ~ t r o d u c e dinto state legislatures t o forbid the teaching of .Darwinism'. .there is certainly need for renewing the age-long fight against traditional error." To aid in this he says. '.I am setting down, in the following pages. certain fundamental canelusions which have emerged from many years of teaching and many hours of conference with those able and disposed to diseus~the matter." First the author calk attention t o the general indifference of the public toward the scientist and his work. Then he places the fault for this neglect. The insistence of the scientist that he must be abmlutely impartial has so dehumanized his findings that the lay public has neither found them nor the scientist attractive. Eventually, however, this dehumanized mass of knowledge has reached the public, mostly through its expression in material progrw. Yet, while the common folk are ready t o accept the prinof science, ps applied t o machines, or even
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to the animal and plant nodd many will not follow when these same principles are applied to man and his relation to the natural world. They also refuse to substitute scientific methods for the haphazard ways of tradition. Here, then, the author claim, is the place where the "rehumanizing of knowledge" is mast needed. His concrete suggestions on how to do i t are then made. I t would not be amiss to say that all teachers are engaged in the task of "humanizing howledge." Certainly any scientist must find in D M o r Robinson's brief volume much to stimulate his efforts to "wme forth from his labmatory" and report hip results to the public. B. C L ~ W R D HBNDRICPS
A Diagnostic Stody of the Sohlect Matter of High School Chemistry. S. R. Pawms, Ph.D. Teachers College, Columbia University, Contribution to Education, No. 149. Published by Teachers College, 1924. viii 84 pp. $1.15 postpaid.
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This pamphlet indudes lists and tables, recording the results of 8 tests run in 192+1922 in 15 Minnesota high schools and 28 high schools outside Minnesota. This monowph war reaiewed in the October number of Tars Jouan*~but the space available did not allow recording the wnclurionr reached by the author. These conelusions have been summarized from a careful study of the text itself and are as follows: 1. Most high sehwl students "secure a clear comprehension of the application of valenee" in bvilding formulas. 2. They "acquire a pretty clear-cut notion of the meaning of the terms element, mixture and compound." 3. They are "1sueeersful" in giving the chemical names of substan~esthe common names of which are given them. Lc;r than half of the students answered fifty per cent of these question. correctly. 4. Knowledge of definitions "b not acquired by many," a. 8.. 35% of the students do not know that aeids are characterized by the formation of hydrogen ions in solution, and about 55% cannot define efflorereenee. 5. Upwards of 50% of the students cl-ify correctly twelve selected members of the PCtivity series. 6. Under biography ''Priestly. Avogadre and Gay-Lursac are bent h o r n but approximately one-third of the students are unable to make pmper associations for two of these men. More than half failed to associate the name of Dalton With the Atomic Theorv. Arrhenius i. almost an entire stranger.,. 7. Stndents' "knowledge of chemical changes and of laboratory and commercial preparation is woefully deficient.'. c. g., "45% do not know the mmmerdal soof ammonia.'' ~ a t does a not substantiate the claim often made that the
"functional value of chemirtry has been that i t gives a knowledge of important indvstrinl pmces%es." 8. Naming the uses of chemical substances fares but little better, a. 8.. "nearly 60% do not know that sulfuric acid is used extensively as a dehydmting age"t.9. Knowledge of the solubility of saltsisrather meager. 10. "Ability to state numeried ratio* between qusnliliu 01 intcractin~rubtanrcs and to makc rnathcmetiral celculstionr" met with ebutlt 5 I:"rdetailcdinf"rm~tiiiibbbbt the problems see page 18 of the monograph. 11. "It is somewhat eaJier for students to mite the names from the formulas than the re. verse, get only the simplest and most evidmt formulas are named wnectly by more than 75% of the pupils. Only about half of these formalas are correctly named by 50% of the pupils." 12. "The formulas for some very common I~bomtoryrubrtsnees are written correctly by lets than 50%. Difficulties in writing formula^ seem to arise when i t becomes necessary to insert a subscript." 13. Completing eqvationr when the left-hand members are given is done correctly in about three-fifths of the 14. Writing entire eqvations is done w m e t l y in about one-third of the cases. "Comparatively few students are able to apply even the most elementary principles of oxidation and reduction in the writing of equations." 15. InaIl,177outof303items,ornearly60%are answered correctly by less than 50% of the pupils. 16. The best answers are received from those ~ ~ h o owhere ls there are between 20 and 60 chemistry students. 17. "The task set for High School students of chemistry is beyond their neeomplishment. Evidence is convincing that students obtain no mssterv of a large &omt of the materials oi inntruction.'' 18. "The i t e m of the tests are not too difficult to be fairly representative of t h e materials contained in the commonly used t=tbookr," but they "are probably wnGdembly easier than would be obtained from a random sampling of the t e d book material.'' 19. "A large proportion of the textbook msterial means little or nothing to 50% or mare of the students who have studied one of these texts in High School for one year." 20. "Knowledge and skill tested.. .are for most students almost completely lost Within one O r two years after instruction has ceased," although "ability to do items was retained much better in certain divisions of the test than in other%" 21. "The ability of students who have studied chemistry in vniversity elasnes to do the tasks in thore tests ir not appreciably different from that of students who have studied chemistry in the better high schools." ~~
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