- Email: [email protected]
The Chemistry of Electrode Processes
Electroanalytical Chemistry and lnterfacial Electrochemistry, 53 (1974)
163- 164
163
~) Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne - Printed in The'Netherlands
BOOK REVIEWS
The Chemistry of Electrode Processes, by Ilana Fried, Academic Press, London, 1973, x + 225 pages, £4.90. In lecturing to final year chemistry and metallurgy undergraduates on the chemistry of electrode processes over the past 20 years, I have had continual difficulty in recommending a suitable introductory textbook. Of books on electrodics there is no shortage, indeed some might say that there is a surfeit, but few are illuminating and even fewer are readable and simple. The present text is both and goes far to meet the difficulty. In the space of 225 pages it introduces the main concepts which have proved valuable in the study of electrode reactions with emphasis on their physical significance and minimal but adequate mathematics. These are put in the essential framework of experimental methods without which electrodics could not exist. Finally, although inevitably sketchily, the subject is illustrated by technological applications such as electroplating, corrosion, batteries and electrochemical manufacturing methods. Much must obviously be left out in a short bbok, but on testing this by looking up a dozen topics in the index only on "liquid junction potential" was information totally absent. There are minor blemishes. The discussion of the sign of electrode potentials while leading to the system now adopted suggests that it is different from the former "European" and "American" conventions. I had always supposed it to coincide with the European convention, and to be different from both seems an impossibility ! Some carelessness in spelling, particularly of proper names, also offends the eye occasionally, e.g. "quater wave plate" and "Gibbs-Dunhem relation"; Mr. Keith R. Williams, the author of An Introduction to Fuel Cells, would also scarcely recognise himself as "J. R. Wiliams". These are trivial defects, however, in a book which provides a really useful introduction for anyone entering the field of electrodics. A. Hickling, University of Liverpool
Zeta-Potentiale und Flotierbarkeit yon Mineralen, Applied Mineralogy 6, by P. Ney, Springer-Verlag, Vienna, New York, 1973, 214 pages, DM98 (approx. $ 38). Theoretical surface-electrochemists have developed a rather sophisticated physical chemistry of interfaces in terms of imaginary planes and imaginary potentials (Z, if0, ~bo,etc.). Unfortunately, the values of these parameters for the majority of real materials in real aqueous media are unknown--and possibly too ill-defined to be measurable! Consequently, since 1900, when Hardy established the importance of electrostatics in stabilizing positive and negative protein sols, practical colloid chemists have been "making do" with zeta-potentials. Despite the scorn heaped on ( by purists--because of(recognized) uncertainties in its quantitative relationship to ~kor a (charge density) and suspicions about the
163- 164
163
~) Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne - Printed in The'Netherlands
BOOK REVIEWS
The Chemistry of Electrode Processes, by Ilana Fried, Academic Press, London, 1973, x + 225 pages, £4.90. In lecturing to final year chemistry and metallurgy undergraduates on the chemistry of electrode processes over the past 20 years, I have had continual difficulty in recommending a suitable introductory textbook. Of books on electrodics there is no shortage, indeed some might say that there is a surfeit, but few are illuminating and even fewer are readable and simple. The present text is both and goes far to meet the difficulty. In the space of 225 pages it introduces the main concepts which have proved valuable in the study of electrode reactions with emphasis on their physical significance and minimal but adequate mathematics. These are put in the essential framework of experimental methods without which electrodics could not exist. Finally, although inevitably sketchily, the subject is illustrated by technological applications such as electroplating, corrosion, batteries and electrochemical manufacturing methods. Much must obviously be left out in a short bbok, but on testing this by looking up a dozen topics in the index only on "liquid junction potential" was information totally absent. There are minor blemishes. The discussion of the sign of electrode potentials while leading to the system now adopted suggests that it is different from the former "European" and "American" conventions. I had always supposed it to coincide with the European convention, and to be different from both seems an impossibility ! Some carelessness in spelling, particularly of proper names, also offends the eye occasionally, e.g. "quater wave plate" and "Gibbs-Dunhem relation"; Mr. Keith R. Williams, the author of An Introduction to Fuel Cells, would also scarcely recognise himself as "J. R. Wiliams". These are trivial defects, however, in a book which provides a really useful introduction for anyone entering the field of electrodics. A. Hickling, University of Liverpool
Zeta-Potentiale und Flotierbarkeit yon Mineralen, Applied Mineralogy 6, by P. Ney, Springer-Verlag, Vienna, New York, 1973, 214 pages, DM98 (approx. $ 38). Theoretical surface-electrochemists have developed a rather sophisticated physical chemistry of interfaces in terms of imaginary planes and imaginary potentials (Z, if0, ~bo,etc.). Unfortunately, the values of these parameters for the majority of real materials in real aqueous media are unknown--and possibly too ill-defined to be measurable! Consequently, since 1900, when Hardy established the importance of electrostatics in stabilizing positive and negative protein sols, practical colloid chemists have been "making do" with zeta-potentials. Despite the scorn heaped on ( by purists--because of(recognized) uncertainties in its quantitative relationship to ~kor a (charge density) and suspicions about the