The 100 Most Important Chemical Compounds: A Reference Guide Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I am interested in information about important chemicals, and found much to
hold my attention in this book. Each of the compounds is described as to its properties, chemical formula and CAS reference number. For each compound there is a summary of its history, discovery, and uses. Methods of industrial production are given.
I found particularly intriguing the many interesting historical items :
the discovery of mauve, the stories of insulin and penicillin, to name a few.
This said, I must note some irritating matters. As a retired chemistry
prof. myself, I am familiar with much of the simpler chemistry presented.
I would hesitate to put this book into the hands of a student because of the many errors of fact it contains, and the many examples of awkward writing it contains. There seems to have been a major failure of editing.
Here are some of the errors I found.
Misspellings : on page 293 . "methyl" is spelled incorrectly twice.
page 233 "sodium iodine" for sodium iodide. page 111 : "ethyl iodine" for ethyl iodide. page 51: "use" for used. There are many other words where the last letter is omitted.
Incorrect formulas : page 51 secondary butyl alcohol. Also page 51 -
butadiene with three double bonds. page 115: vinyl acetate. page 175
methyl methacrylate.page 168 polyisoprene.
Incorrect names : page 24: " iron(III) oxide or alumina is refined from bauxite" . Page 26: "iron oxide exists as the mineral corundum"
page 178 : ritalin named as " alpha-phenyl-2-piperidine acetic" (?)
page 216 : cumene hydroperoxide is referred to as phenol hydroperoxide.
Strange references : page 52 : "butyric acid is an unsaturated fatty acid,which means all carbon -carbon bonds are single bonds"
page 69: methylene chloride is called " a freon substance". page 112:
halogenation is described as "hydrogen substituting for hydrogen"
page 100: "DEET is the most popular pesticide used as a repellent for humans" page 283: "cycloalkanes are dehydrated forming aromatics" page 303: " xylenes are formed from the reformulation of naphthas..".
"reformulation" is not in the glossary, but "reforming" is. Perhaps this is meant.page 38: in discussing benzene substitution: " The process of nitration produces a number of nitro compounds, for example nitroglycerin".
Awkward wording : page 281 : "TNT is the abbreviation of the aromatic nitrated aromatic compound..".page 282 : "the British made extensive use of picric acid shells in World War I which was called lyddite after the town of Lydd.."
All these examples could have been caught by more careful editing.

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