Foreword

Chemists are skilled at experimental work. Chemists are experts at preparing new chemical substances, determining the chemical composition of systems, the densities of liquids, the rates of chemical reactions and the heat liberated by chemical reactions. This Notebook takes up the story at the point where chemists are presented with the results of experiments in a table reporting, for example, densities as a function of composition of a solution at fixed temperature and pressure. This approach recognises that tables of results are effectively the ‘crown jewels’, reflecting experimental skill, enormous care and long hours spent in the laboratory. Granted the resulting table of numbers, this Notebook aims to answer the question ’now what?’.

Nevertheless we do not discuss experimental procedures. The exception to this general approach concerns calorimetry, an enormous subject [1-8]. In several cases we comment on calorimetric techniques in order to develop links between recorded heat q (at constant pressure) and the change in enthalpy H.

Footnotes
[1] M. L. McGlashan, Chemical Thermodynamics, Academic Press, London 1979, chapter 4.
[2] J. M. Sturtevant in Techniques of Chemistry, volume 1, Physical methods of calorimetry, ed. A. Weissberger and B. W. Rossitor, Wiley-Interscience, New York, 1971, part V, chapter VII.
[3] H. A. Skinner in Biochemical Microcalorimetry, ed. H. D.Brown, Academic Press, New York, 1969.
[4] S. Sunner and I. Wadso, Acta Chem. Scand.,1959,13,97.
[5] J. A. Larkin and M. L. McGlashan, J. Chem. Soc., 1961,3425.
[6] S. J. Gill, J.Chem.Thermodyn.,1988,20,1361.
[7] I. Wadso in Experimental Thermodynamics, IUPAC Chemical Data, Series No. 39, Volume 4, ed. K. N. Marsh and P. A. G. O’Hara, Blackwell, Oxford, 1994.
[8] M. J. Blandamer, P. M. Cullis and J. B. F. N. Engberts, Pure Appl. Chem.,1996,68,1577.