Partington J.R. An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry. Vol. 1. Fundamental Principles. The Properties of Gases

Textbook. — London — New York — Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co, 1949. — XLII + 943 p.The present book is intended to form part of a comprehensive treatise on Physical Chemistry in three or four volumes. The treatment lays emphasis on the experimental side, which has been rather neglected in some recent works on Physical Chemistry. In addition to descriptions of apparatus and experimental methods, collections of numerical data are given, including material not easily accessible and scattered through a large number of publications. Very full references to the literature are given; these cover periodical publications, proceedings of academies, books, dissertations, and all sources which were thought useful, and include most of the interesting classical publications as well as more recent work, in the case of Vol. I to the end of 1948. The text aims at being concise yet readable, and all points which are likely to offer difficulty are carefully explained.Although the book is comprehensive it also aims at being intelligible, the title 'Advanced' referring rather to the size and scope of the work than to its difficulty. For this reason the mathematical parts have been treated with great care. The Mathematical Introduction, together with special sections in the text dealing with more advanced mathematical apparatus, should enable a reader having only a very elementary knowledge of mathematics to acquire what is necessary. At the same time, the developments of statistical mechanics and wave mechanics are fully utilised, and the text is modern and comprehensive from this point of view. The symbols used are uniform, a full list of these being given, and equations as given in the literature have been reproduced in accordance with this systematic symbol list.Although the relevant theory is fully dealt with in all parts, details of speculative material or formulae which contain undeterminable quantities and are without practical significance are omitted. There are, however, literature references to most of these. The space so set free has been used in assembling empirical or semi-empirical formulae which are likely to be of interest to laboratory workers, or to chemists or engineers engaged in large-scale work, who often require quantitative data not available which can be calculated with sufficient approximation for their needs by means of such formulae. The book, therefore, diverges from a tendency to treat the subject round a few theoretical ideas which may or may not be correct, and so to neglect a large mass of important practical material lying outside the immediate interest. Only those who, like the author, have had to search for such aids to research can fully appreciate their value.Contents.