Abstract
MR. ALEXANDER, with the aid of sixty contributors of a dozen different nationalities, has made a gallant attempt to produce a comprehensive treatise on colloid chemistry in English. His success may be measured by the mass of useful material which is here presented, though the arrangement does not always make it readily available. The more general papers, for example, Harkins on surface energy, Hardy on lubrication, Freundlich on adsorption, Gibbs on aerosols, and Hatschek on viscosity, are models which might with advantage have been followed by some of the less eminent authors. The detailed discussion of any particular piece of experimental work is only permissible in a book of this kind when some very general principle is thereby illustrated, and on these grounds some half-dozen of the papers here printed should be relegated to the ordinary journals; their inclusion tends to produce the atmosphere of a Festschrift. Again, the actual matter of some of the articles is already available elsewhere; for example, that of Millikan on measuring the electrons, and the unduly long account given by Von Weimarn of his theory of the colloidal state. It is to be hoped that in the two volumes to follow the editor will be less merciful, even though his contributors write without hope of reward.
Colloid Chemistry: Theoretical and Applied.
By Selected International Contributors. Collected and edited by Jerome Alexander. Vol. 1: Theory and Methods. Pp. 974. (New York: The Chemical Catalog Co., Inc., 1926.) 14.50 dollars.
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THORNE, P. Colloid Chemistry: Theoretical and Applied . Nature 118, 585 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118585a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118585a0