Manitoba’s Open Textbooks

Q: The text covers all areas and ideas of the subject appropriately and provides an effective index and/or glossary

At over 1000 pages, this textbook is extremely comprehensive and covers not only the typical aspects of analytical chemistry that are commonly found in most texts, such as gravimetry and titrations, but also many related concepts, including the statistical treatment of data and quality systems. The text is well written and well organized, and follows a suitable approach by introducing less complex aspects of the subject first and then building on this foundation to lead to more complex topics.

The author has obviously put an enormous amount of effort into writing this voluminous text and appears quite knowledgeable in most aspects of the subject matter. There are numerous practice problems along with answers in each section, which is very helpful to both the student and instructor. In addition, the text contains many “sidebar” notes that add informative observations to keep the material interesting and to suggest further study. Worked examples and figures increase the reader’s ability to comprehend some of the subject matter.

Having said that, it is important to note the shortcomings of the text in order to allow the effort that has been expended to produce the current version to be put to the best possible use. My main impression on reading through the material was that the author concentrated greatly on the theoretical aspects of the subject matter and especially on the mathematical and statistical basis of acquiring and processing data, but at the expense of introducing students to the details of many important aspects of the subject. In my opinion, analytical chemistry is first and foremost a practical science, as it requires significant skill and great attention to detail to obtain the high levels of precision and accuracy that are associated with modern day chemical analysis. It therefore surprised me that this text in many cases eschews discussion of the physical or practical aspects of analysis in favour of more complex discussions of the theoretical underpinnings. The theoretical basis of each aspect of analytical chemistry is important, of course, but at some point students must know how to do chemical analysis.

As an example, considering how frequently employed pipetting techniques are in analytical chemistry and how crucial they are, the text spends very little time on pipetting (less than half a page out of 1000 pages). There are no diagrams to assist the student in learning the proper hand positioning or the appropriate use of the various types of suction bulbs. There is only a very brief discussion of Eppendorf-type pipettes, even though they are very widely used in almost every analytical laboratory.

In the same manner, some of the chapters, especially those regarding chromatography, tend to omit important details. One has the feeling that these chapters were intended more as a brief overview of the subject rather than as a means for students to actually learn about the topic in detail. As an example, the table listing standard gas chromatography stationary phases omits 5% phenyl/95% dimethyl, which is a very common phase. As well, the various types of column internal diameters and the effects and benefits of each type are not addressed, even though this is an important topic. The different types of capillary columns (such as WCOT and PLOT) are noted very briefly, but the specialized applications of each type of column is not mentioned, leaving the reader to wonder why there might be different types and what the respective advantages of each type is. The section on detectors for gas chromatography omits several important, albeit less commonly used, detectors, such as the NPD and PID types.

Similarly, mass spectrometry, an extremely important aspect of modern day analytical chemistry, is given only a very brief half page overview.

As noted above, the text is often heavy on statistical treatments, sometimes (in my opinion) presented at a level exceeding that required by the second year student for whom this textbook might otherwise be intended. With regard to the chapter on statistics, although the chapter is well written and comprehensive, the author attempts to cover such a wide range of statistical information that it reads like a stand-alone statistics textbook. For this reason, I would suggest that it would be preferable to address only the most basic aspects of data analysis (such as measures of central tendency) in this text and have students use a dedicated statistics textbook for their study of more advanced statistical concepts.

The other deficit associated with trying to pack so many statistical tests into this book is that each test is sometimes not discussed in as much detail as might be desired. As an example, the text introduces the two-tailed t test to compare a mean from analysis with a true value. I have always felt that this is a potentially misleading test, because a large s value can decrease the experimental t value, thus allowing one to pass the test even with a significant difference between the experimental and true values. That is, poor precision can compensate for poor accuracy. The text does not address this important limitation of the text, although it does mention that an extremely small value of s can compromise the test.

The chapter on calibration could be rearranged. The discussion of linear calibration curves comes after several examples in which calibration curve equations are used, which is somewhat confusing to the reader. In addition, the discussion of linear regression is somewhat complex for an introductory text. The majority of first or second year students may find this discussion difficult to follow and would benefit from a less in-depth approach that simply introduces them to the concept of using the familiar “y = mx + b” equation to describe a calibration curve.

The entirety of Chapter 6 essentially represents material that would be found in an introductory General Chemistry textbook. Including this information here is not necessarily a bad thing but perhaps contributes to the somewhat intimidating size of this text. This material could be greatly reduced or even omitted without affecting the utility of the text as an analytical chemistry resource. It would be even more helpful to break up this information and present it in conjunction with the ensuing discussion of gravimetric procedures, acid/base titrations, etc.

The text does not have an index, although in the electronic form (either PDF or on-line) one can use the “Find” function to locate specific terms or keywords.

Comprehensiveness Rating: 3 out of 5