Product Description
The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 88th Edition continues to offer the most authoritative, up-to-date data to scientists around the world. This edition contains NEW tables on Properties of Ionic Liquids, Solubilities of Hydrocarbons in Sea Water, Solubility of Organic Compounds in Superheated Water, and Nutritive Value of Foods. It also updates many tables including Critical Constants, Heats of Vaporization, Aqueous Solubility of Organic Compounds, Vapor Pressure of Mercury, Scientific Abbreviations and Symbols, and Bond Dissociation Energies. The 88th Edition also presents a new Foreword written by Dr. Harold Kroto, a 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 3 reviews)

Exhaustive and worth the price

If you have any use for the practical aspects of chemistry, this book is for you. Want to know how to fractionate pyroligneous acid to obtain methanol and acetone? Or how to separate different metals from foundry dross and scrap alloys? Or why you can't store fluorides in glass? Just look up the chemical and physical properties of the compounds in this book. It is definitely a must-have if you work in the reclamation industry. Information on the physical properties of metals and semimetallic elements is also contained in this book, essential for metallurgical engineers. I own an edition from 1976, but even the outdated one in my collection is indispensable. I thoroughly recommend it.
April 08, 2008

A real review for the CRC Handbook

While the first reviewer is correct concerning the Handbook's comprehensive and encyclopedic nature, I doubt it would make for a comfortable pillow.

The Chemical Rubber Company issues its 88th edition of authoritative listings of Fundamental Physical Constants and other scientific data necessary for university and professional research. The Handbook is broken up into 16 Sections followed by two appendices and an index, all of which are listed as follows:

Section 1: Basic Constants, Units, and Conversion Factors
Section 2: Symbols, Terminology, and Nomenclature
Section 3: Physical Constants of Organic Chemistry
Section 4: Properties of the Elements and Inorganic Compounds
Section 5: Thermochemistry, Electrochemistry, and Kinetics
Section 6: Fluid Properties
Section 7: Biochemistry
Section 8: Analytical Chemistry
Section 9: Molecular Structure and Spectroscopy
Section 10: Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Section 11: Nuclear and Particle Physics
Section 12: Properties of Solids
Section 13: Polymer Properties
Section 14: Geophysics, Astronomy, and Acoustics
Section 15: Practical Laboratory Data
Section 16: Health and Safety Information
Appendix A: Mathematical Tables
Appendix B: Sources of Physical and Chemical Data

It must be said early on that this Handbook is not intended to provide any type of tutorial on the topics, but is the product of many experiments from among the various fields mentioned in the listed sections above. The Handbook is a collection of scientific facts and values to be used for calculations and experiments. (The reviewer for the 87th edition of the Handbook rated it 4 stars because the tome failed to give his son good explanations for phenomena in chemistry--again, that is not the Handbook's purpose.)

Therefore, I am probably preaching to the choir with regard to those who will actually purchase the current edition. All others uninterested in chemistry & physics research, as well as up-to-date information on scientific data, will probably want to steer clear of such an expensive pillow. Nevertheless, those that are interested will be grateful for the depth and scope of work done to produce the best sets of tables, data, and constants so that we can frutifully carry out our own personal research.
October 23, 2007

Dis book be da bom

This is a comprehensive, encyclopedic listing of a whole lot of data! Very useful, and if you can't use it, it's big so you could use it as like a pillow or something.
October 02, 2007

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