Product Description

PRINCIPLES OF INSTRUMENTAL ANALYSIS places an emphasis on the theoretical basis of each type of instrument, its optimal area of application, its sensitivity, its precision, and its limitations.You'll also learn about elementary analog and digital electronics, computers, and treatment of analytical datA. Visit the book companion website for tutorials on instrumental methods, Excel files of data analysis and simulations of analytical techniques to help you visualize important concepts in this course, and selected papers from the chemical literature to stimulate interest and provide background information for study.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #280588 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1056 pages

About the Author
Douglas A. Skoog earned a B.S. in chemistry from Oregon State University and received his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Illinois. The lead author of several best-selling texts, Dr. Skoog is the 1999 recipient of the American Chemical Society award in analytical chemistry, sponsored by the Fisher Scientific Company. That same year, he was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1993, he received the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Stanford University.

F. James Holler is a Professor of Chemistry and recipient of the Alumni Association Great Teacher Award at the University of Kentucky. He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University. In addition to his role as co-author of several best-selling texts, he is co-creator of the world-famous Periodic Table of Comic Books.

Stanley R. Crouch is Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University. He received his undergraduate and M.S. degrees from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Illinois. He is the recipient of the 2001 American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Chemical Instrumentation and the 1996 ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Customer Reviews

sucks as a textbook / awesome as a reference tool!
I am a graduate student in Analytical Chemistry. This book has been a great resource when I need to look up a speceific topic. I like the fact that it provides references to most topics. They are a great starting point if you want to research that topic. Just look up the references, plug it into SciFinder and see who's been quoting it a lot and then look up his/her latest book or review article on the subject ;)

Forget about this book if you want to use it as a textbook, unless you have a very good instructor who'll provide you with a good overview and pick'n'choose what parts of the book you need to be aquainted with.

I don't think this book was written to be a self-contained, 'read-it-from-beginning' & 'i'll-take-your-hand-and-guide-you-though-the-subject' type of a book. So you can't blame it for what it's not meant to be. This is the type of a book you need to pick up with an established purpose or question in your mind. Then you'll consider it to be a valuable resource. If you pick it up just as a beginning student in the field, you'll absolutely hate it with a serious passion! If you use it as I suggest, it will take an honored place in your library. I have the deepest respect for authors of this book and am very thankful for providing me with such a strong tool in my career.

Another great book I'd put in the same category is
Spectrometric Identification of Organic Compounds
by Robert M. Silverstein, Francis X. Webster, David Kiemle
(6th edition)

Good instrumental chemistry overview, but needs a proofread.
As an undergrad chemistry major at James Madison University, I was required to purchase this text for my senior level instrumental methods class. Fortunately, my professor was one of the co-authors to a previous edition of this book and was able to point out many of the editing flaws in this text before they became a problem. But any good book has its problems. I found it increasingly frustrating that some of the diagrams were mislabeled, or labeled with information of questionable accuracy and/or value. Additionally, the book is written in an extremely dull fashion. Well, you may be saying "this is chemistry, its supposed to be dull and boring!" I would tell you that is the absolute untruth! I have read many technical manuals and texts which cover not only difficult material, but present it in an easily readable fashion. This COULD be a fabulous book if the authors would proofread the newest version themselves and correct some of the errors. A large portion of this book is devoted to the accuracy of data and the maximization of signal to noise ratio. With this in mind I find it disturbing that a book which so advocates this has so many errors in it!

Almost a complete waste of money
I was not impressed when I first started using this book for my Instrumental class. The information that is given correctly is very well done. However, there are so many errors that it outweighs the usefulness of the book. I realize that all books are going to have errors but this is horrible. The sixth edition of this book is much better and doesn't have the same mistakes that the fifth edition does. If you are looking to buy this book get the sixth edition.