Book Reviews 415

troscopy. The series aims to provide guidance and advice to individuals in the course of their work. The target audience for this text are the practical scien- tists who use flame spectroscopy extensively and who wish to obtain their results “rapidly, safely, inexpensively, and with minimal mental effort”. The author managed to achieve this goal by drawing extensively on his more than 20 years of experience in the field of atomic absorption spectrometry. The book was written with a lot of emphasis on practical applications of flame atomic absorption and emission complemented with sufficient information on theory and instrumentation. An abundance of useful litera- ture references are provided for those who require more detailed information.

To summarize, this book is a must for all users of flame spectrometry but will be particularly useful for newcomers to this field. It will provide many handy tips and useful background information that can be translated into reliable analytical results in the labo- ratory. The book is not a typical undergraduate text book but is, as indicated by the title, “a practical guide” for practicing analytical chemists and stu- dents.

P.J.J.G. Marais

Karl Slickers, Automatic Atomic Emission Spec- troscopy, 2nd edn., Bruhlsche Universit’atsdruckerei, Germany, 1993 (ISBN 3-9803333-l-O). 537 pp. Price & 35.00.

The book sets out to provide a practical introduc- tion to atomic emission spectrometric methods of analysis, with the emphasis placed on solids analysis. The book comprises 14 Chapters with the main content contained in Chapters 3 to 10.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of historical, economic, training, and quality aspects of AES and is only really useful to gain a historic perspective.

Chapter 4 (26 pp., “ Physical Fundamentals of AES”). This is where the book really starts and details the theory of atomic spectrometry. This chap- ter suffers slightly from poor presentation and orga- nization, as does most of the book, so it is often

difficult to extract the necessary information, though the theory seems to be covered appropriately to the rest of the book.

Chapter 5 (43 pp., “Samples”). This is organized in the following categories: types of samples; sam- pling from melts; preparation of metal samples; preparation of powders, non-conductors, minerals and similar substances; sample preparation for liquids. It is here that the bias of the book becomes apparent, since the first three sections deal exclusively with sample preparation for direct solids analysis primar- ily in the metallurgical industry and takes up 39 pp., while the final section deals with acid digestion of all other sample types and occupies 4 pp.

Chapter 6 (113 pp., “Spectrometer Design”).

This covers flames and plasmas as sources for AES; sample introduction, especially solid sample tech- niques such as spark and glow discharge; optics, gratings, monochromators, polychromators and de- tectors. A large amount of information is covered so the key points tend to be submerged in a welter of peripheral information.

Chapter 7 (70 pp., “Calibration and Evaluation”). This chapter covers calibration procedures (though why the author chooses to put intensity on the x-axis and concentration on the y-axis I cannot guess), accuracy, precision, interferences, drift, evaluation and validation of analytical data. Many real exam- ples are used, especially spark discharge for metals analysis.

Chapter 8 (148 pp., “Spectrometer Methods and Applications for Routine Analysis”). This chapter is divided into the sections: rotrode with spark dis- charge; portable arc/spark spectrometers; spark dis- charge in argon @DAR); and ICP-AES. The section on SDAR is much the longest (86 pp.) and covers every conceivable aspect of SDAR in the metallurgi- cal industry, with a profusion of examples.

Chapter 9 (19 pp., “Design of Spectrometer Rooms”). A short chapter which you can take or leave.

Chapter 10 (15 pp., “Further Application Exam-

ples”). This chapter is hardly necessary considering the number of examples given throughout the text.

Chapter 11 (6 pp., “References”). Chapter 12 (“Key Word Index”). The index is

woefully inadequate (4 pp.) for such a long book. Chapter 13 (“Contributions from Spectrometer

416 Book Reviews

Manufacturers”). Profiles of several instrument man- ufacturers and their products.

Chapter 14 (“Advertisements”).

Gordon Filby, Spreadsheets for Chemists, VCH, Weinheim, 1995 (ISBN 3-527-28570-9). xi + 408 pp. Price f 39.50/DM 98.00.

The book is very long and is packed with infor- mation. However, it is badly let down by the index, which is completely inadequate, so most of the information is inaccessible. If you are after a general text then this is not it, but if you work in the metals industry or do a lot of solid sample analysis then this book would be extremely useful, and is as compre- hensive a text as you are likely to get.

E. Hywel Evans

Heinz-Helmut Perkampus, Encyclopedia of Spec- troscopy, VCH, Weinheim, 1995 (ISBN 3-527- 29281-0). 669 pp. Price DM 148.00.

Spreadsheets must, by now, be a fairly common feature in laboratories of all shapes, sizes and func- tions. This book by Gordon Filby aims to show the range of problems that can be tackled by a chemist using a spreadsheet, so avoiding either tedious hand calculation or writing and debugging a computer program. In this, the book succeeds admirably with some 57 example spreadsheets ranging from the trivial (e.g., calculating molecular weights) through analytical chemistry, kinetics, crystallography to molecular orbital calculations, with separate spread- sheets to demonstrate many of the numerical meth- ods involved as well.

We must be grateful that this marvelous reference work is now available in English in a very smooth translation. It is a matter of wonder that a single author can write so authoritatively and clearly on subjects as diverse as optics, kinetics, atomic and molecular spectroscopy; on theory, instrumentation and applications; on X-ray, electron, magnetic and mass spectrometry. Nevertheless, the main thrust of the book is optical spectroscopy. It is such a pleasure to dip into this book that it seems petty to criticize it. Despite the addition of new material (e.g., near infrared spectroscopy) to the German edition, there are still significant omissions. This may reflect the rapid march of progress and gestation period of the work. The reader will look in vain, for example, for acousto-optical tunable filters, electrospray mass spectrometry, ZEKE photoelectron spectroscopy or imaging methods. Charge injection devices are men- tioned, but not the more significant charge coupled devices. NMR of solids is discussed in a line. More surprisingly there is no mention of noise or signal- to-noise or data handling. But these are minor mat- ters. The only real concern is that despite the at- tempts of the translators to provide updated English language references, it is still inadequate in respect of the number and modernity of the references.

The spreadsheet used is an old DOS version of Lotus l-2-3, ~2.2. While I cannot agree completely with the rationale, the choice is largely irrelevant to the value of the book. It is an excellent starting point for newcomers to spreadsheets, covering the mechan- ics of using a spreadsheet to quite an advanced level (Chapters 1 to 6, 146 pp.) and providing a good range of working spreadsheets to use as is or to modify and extend (Worksheets 1 to 57, pp. 14% 352). Some of the theory behind each of the exam- ples is given and there is a fairly extensive bibliogra-

phy. All of the examples are on an accompanying disc

and you do not need the specific version of Lotus l-2-3 to run them - I ran a large selection in

Microsoft Excel ~5.0 without difficulty, the major problem being with spreadsheet formatting macros and functions. Appendices A and B deal with mov- ing to other spreadsheet programs including Win- dows versions.

Overall this is a very useful book for the scientist (not just the chemist) starting to use spreadsheets and the disc of examples will prove useful to the experi- enced user who has always meant to implement a particular spreadsheet, but never got round to it.

T.L. Threlfall R.L. Tranter