Chemical Education Today

www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 82 No. 5 May 2005 • Journal of Chemical Education 685

Book & Media Reviews edited byJeffrey Kovac

University of TennesseeKnoxville, TN 37996-1600

Exploring Chemical Analysis, 3rd Edition

by Daniel C. Harris

W. H. Freeman: New York, NY, 2005. 610 pp.ISBN 0716705710 (paperback). $113.60

reviewed by Jack K. Steehler

Exploring Chemical Analysis is a lighter version of DanielHarris’s popular Quantitative Chemical Analysis textbook,which is a common choice for quantitative analysis courses.Although slimmed down to about 70% of the length of thelonger book, Exploring Chemical Analysis does not have thefeel of a watered down version. It covers almost exactly thesame list of topics, in good detail. It would be a fine choicefor a quantitative analysis course or other single-semester ana-lytical courses that precede instrumental analysis. It is alsosuitable for less traditional courses, such as a freshman levelcourse for well prepared science majors.

Stylistically the book is very readable, with a bit of hu-mor as well. There is a consistent emphasis on interestingapplications of analytical chemistry; each chapter begins witha fully described application, and other applications appearin boxes within each chapter. Some chapters use the initialexample as a theme throughout the chapter and as the basisfor the specific examples discussed. Featured applications in-clude analyzing chocolate for caffeine and theobromine, ar-chaeological and geochemical studies, a large number ofbiochemical applications, many environmental analyses,etc.—truly something for everyone.

The book’s content includes fundamentals of samplingand statistics, classical techniques of gravimetry and titration

(acid–base, redox, complexometric), atomic and molecularspectroscopy, separations (GC, HPLC, capillary electrophore-sis), and electrochemistry. Each is well developed, with plentyof numerical examples and end-of-chapter problems. Labora-tory experiments are available on the text’s Web site, and manyadditional published experiments from the chemical educationliterature are referenced at the end of each chapter. The thirdedition has well written updates in several areas, including theuse of Excel spreadsheets, ICP-MS, and quality assurance.

Comparing Exploring Chemical Analysis to its longer sib-ling text, you are hard pressed to identify the topics omittedin the shorter version. The mass spectrometry is integratedin the chromatography material rather than appearing as astand-alone chapter. Some details of redox titrations are omit-ted, as are some specialized examples of spectroscopy tech-niques (such as Scatchard plots and the method of continuousvariation). Another example of an omission is the F-test inthe statistics section. However, the bottom line is that theomitted topics aren’t missed, and the remaining material hasplenty of depth and rigor.

The only real question about this text is the author’s owncharacterization of the audience as “students whose primaryinterests generally lie outside of chemistry”. While the appli-cations that are highlighted in the book do reflect that em-phasis, I think the strong mathematical focus of theequilibrium and quantitative analysis topics allow this bookto be used for all audiences, including chemistry majors. Infact, the engaging writing style, the shorter length, and themany interesting topics discussed are likely to be just as val-ued by chemistry majors as by other science majors!

Jack Steehler is in the Department of Chemistry, RoanokeCollege, Salem, VA 24153; jsteehler@roanoke.edu