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Richard Rennie

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A Dictionary of Chemistry Paperback – 30 June 2020

by Law (Editor), Rennie (Editor)

101 ratings

Part of: Oxford Quick Reference (36 books)

Edition: 8^th

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A Dictionary of Chemistry is a popular and authoritative guide to all aspects of its discipline. With over 5,000 entries, its broad coverage includes physical chemistry and biochemistry, and is heavily informed by the most current research. For this eighth edition, the Dictionary has been fully revised, making it the most up-to-date reference work of its kind. Almost 200 entirely new entries have been added, including bioethanol, genome, molecular spintronics, oganesson, phosphorylation, and reticular chemistry. Areas such as analytical chemistry, environmental chemistry, and organic chemistry have been expanded to reflect recent developments in the field. The dictionary's supplementary material has also been enhanced as new diagrams provide readers with useful visual aids, and the appendices have been substantially updated. All web links have been revised and updated, and are easily accessible via the companion website.

From the Publisher

reference, subjects, information, authoritative, explanations

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Review

Review from previous edition a favourite. It should be in every classroom and library ... the reader is drawn inevitably from one entry to the next merely to satisfy curiosity ― School Science Review

From the Publisher

Richard Rennie, BSc, MSc, PhD, has conducted research at the Universities of Aberdeen, Oxford, Cambridge, and California, Santa Barbara. His main interest is in the theory of the structure of matter. He has written a number of articles and reviews. He has contributed to several other reference books, including the Oxford Dictionary of Physics. He wrote the Facts on File Dictionary of Atomic and Nuclear Physics which was published in 2003. He has taught mathematics, physics, and chemistry at various Sixth Form Colleges and is a Senior Invigilator for the University of Cambridge. Jonathan Law has worked in reference publishing for nearly 30 years and is a director of Market House Books Ltd. He is the editor or co-editor of several other books in the Oxford Quick Reference series, including A Dictionary of Finance and Banking and A Dictionary of Business and Management.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press UK; 8th edition (30 June 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 640 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198841221
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198841227
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 19.3 x 4.06 x 12.7 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 235,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 23 in Inorganic Chemistry (Books)
- 67 in Organic Chemistry (Books)
- 92 in Chemistry Textbooks

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Chinmoy Saikia
Products quality
Reviewed in India on 16 March 2024
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Excellent 👍

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A.licia.C.Jorge
Chemistry
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 December 2024
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Great value for money, lovely book, easy to read was recommended by AI, and must admit Great book for explanation of terminology used in chemistry.

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Mark W.
Short-Shrift for BOTH THESE: APPLIED Chemistry and CHEMISTRY of THINGS YOU MEET IN WORLD
Reviewed in the United States on 27 June 2024
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In truth, I bought the dictionary for the reason of "why not" -- along with OTHER Oxford special-subject dictionaries. I saw them as I was purchasing the Oxford dictionary for linguistics. So I purchased the Chemistry dictionary and 3 others besides the one for linguistics.

I'm a retired chemist. My career was more involved in magnetics properties, statistics, and metrology. But I DID do some chemistry. Most notable was much work in INK FORMULATION chemistry. But no more about me or credentials (a tidbit more is in the last paragraph, but just "in passing"). Let's get to the dictionary and why I rate it so low.

In a phrase, this "Oxford Dictionary of Chemistry" (Eighth Edition) (c) 2020 GIVES SHORT SHRIFT to BOTH of THESE: APPLIED CHEMISTRY and CHEMISTRY of STUMBLED-UPON THINGS in the WORLD. The entry/topic of the short-shrift instances can be any of these: NOT PRESENT AT ALL | IMMENSELY TINY (amount of text is insufficient to explain) | IS PRESENT but NOT CROSS-REFERENCED from WHERE USER WOULD KNOW TERM (thus, seemingly not present where user looks up and finds "not there").

I will give some examples which follow. But I have not done a Ph.D.-level researching of this book. But it does tell the tale: how I, a chemist, found so many "lackings" from just random perusal and thoughts popping into my head. Here are the examples...

#1 PORCELAIN Perhaps you want to know what that is. You're not going to find out. There is NO entry. NO cross-reference. NO mention even in the entry 'ceramics'. NOT EVEN under 'kaolin' (a type of clay) that figures in making porcelain.

#2 TUNG OIL (also called Chinawood Oil) NOT PRESENT AT ALL. Linseed oil is present. As is an entry for 'drying oils'. TUNG is the very fastest drying oil there is. By "drying" with oils (or the alkyds made from vegetable oils) is meant AIR OXIDATIVE CROSSLINKING (rather than solvent evaporation). The material actually GAINS weight by absorbing Oxygen from the air and (with steps) being incorporated into the material and crosslinking the long chains. Whether it be [alkyd air-dry] INK or an artist's OIL PAINT, air oxidative crosslinking is "drying" in such cases. Why is linseed oil present, but not the extremely rapidly-drying TUNG OIL?

#3 PARABEN (or PARABENs) You've heard of those. You buy a product from the world and on the package it might say "PARABEN-free" or "CONTAINS NO PARABENS". Well, aside from the controversy, just what the heck is a PARABEN? Right? You'd think a dictionary of chemistry might tell you. And (just maybe) talk about advantage / disadvantage (or "controversy"), but certainly a dictionary would say what the heck IS a paraben. NOPE. Not this dictionary. There is NO ENTRY for PARABEN. There is not even an entry for PARA-HYDROXY-BENZOIC-ACID -- which, guess what that is: PARABEN PARA [hydroxy] BENzoic acid.

#4 coQ10 I won't go into this "vitamin" or "enzyme" 's benefits (sold much as a supplement), but surely it merits SOME entry in the dictionary. There is nothing there but a 0.01% sort-of-there. But you'd never know it. UBIQUINONE has a miniscule entry. But the entry doesn't mention coQ10 -- like it should. How in the world are you supposed to go to UBIQUINONE (or even BE in the 'U' portion of the dictionary) when you want to find out what this coQ10 stuff is? coQ10 should be an entry (with text, or, minimally, with a cross-reference).

#5 RADIUS OF GYRATION Yes, this is a chemistry, not a physics, dictionary. However, the preferatory text CLAIMS "including physical chemistry". RADIUS OF GYRATION is a key PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY MEASURE for POLYMER MOLECULES. The measure gives an idea of how much the polymer molecule decided to "coil up" in solution or to, instead, "stretch out" -- and thus says how much the polymer molecule "likes" the solvent it found itself swimming in.

#6 LACK OF CROSS-REFERENCE 'SMECTIC' 'CHOLESTERIC' -- not present as entries, but discussed in LIQUID CRYSTALS; but the terms should be listed and cross-referenced saying "see LIQUID CRYSTALS"

#7 RuBisCO -- NOT Present as an entry. This ENZYME IS CRITICALLY ESSENTIAL TO PHOTOSYNTHESIS. And you know how important photosynthesis is. Without it there would be nothing to eat (even if you eat the animals that eat the plants). Without RuBisCO, plants can't do that thing whereby THEY eat carbon dioxide. There is a brief entry on 'ribulose biphosphate' -- but would you really know to look there. At least it does THERE mention RuBisCO. But even biochemists and molecular biologists NEVER SAY ribulose...anything. They SAY "RuBisCO" -- and so should this dictionary.

#8 C-2 versus C-4 Plants. Won't go into that complex topic. But photosynthesis gets done in two entirely different ways. One plant type of the two has (as a biochemist put it in his lecture) a VERY HIGH-BUREAUCRACY way of doing it (photosythesis) -- synthesizing something needed, only to destroy it, then creating it again. Lots of energy wasted. Whereas the C-4 plant is EFFICIENT. The biochemist says if you want your child to eat nutritionally well, you don't send him/her to the food bar to eat, but rather you bring him/her a plate of the good stuff. (I won't comment on parenting. It's just an analogy.) This more efficient plant brings the CO2 from the air right to RuBisCO. And again plants are important. This major division into the two types (there is a minor 3rd type), but you will not find that concept in this dictionary. (Perhaps it is in Oxford's BIOLOGY dictionary).

#9 RADICAL PAIR This is so important in chemistry in the world. There is NOT A THING entered on radical pair considerations. Yes, SINGLET and TRIPLET are present as entries -- but not specific to radical pairs. Likewise "cage effect" is there; but, of course, too brief is its text. And "cage effect" does NOT MENTION RADICAL PAIR CAGE. And guess what: The radical pair cage is CENTRAL to how birds migrate using the Earth's magnetic field.

#10 There is nothing on Tc99m -- Technetium 99m (m=metastable). Tc99m has a half-life of about 6 hours. It's used in medicine practice to perform a "bone scan". You are injected with Tc99m and thence begin EMITTING gamma-rays. Yeppers. But because Tc is imbibed by healthy bones, your gamma ray glowing (seen via a gamma ray camera) says how your bones are doing. But the ONLY Tc99 mentioned in the entry is, and I quote: "...stable isotope technetium-99 (half-life 2.6 x10^6 years)." With no mention of Tc99m, the dictionary borders on MIS-information. You will not be injected with something that will have you glowing gamma rays for 3 MEGA-YEARS. Omission as fostering misinformation -- that's what I'd call it.

#11 VIBRATIONAL Circular Dichroism -- CD (circular dichroisme) is there, but not VCD. But you've had enough, I'm sure.

So then...

Why did I give this dictionary even 2 stars? Well, the numerosity of entries is high. As we know, that is great marketing; sells dictionaries that way. And there about 603 pages to the strictly dictionary portion. But those 603 pages include just a handful of pages on "chronology"s and "feature"s, but they would subtract only 10 or 12 pages. So the dictionary proper is just shy of 600 pages with "almost 5,250 entries [stated on back cover]". But numerosity -- of page count or of entry count, as you can tell from my earlier review text, is NOT the important consideration for quality of a dictionary. But the entries count DOES "count" for SOMEthing. So that's part of the 2-star rating.

I must also admit I was so impressed that CIDNP was present (both its acronym and its long-form cross-referencing one another; something this dictionary does a tiny bit, but way not enough). I did a RESEARCH PROPOSAL -- a requirement for getting a Ph.D. -- employing CIDNP to determine mechanism in some biochemistry transport / reaction process. (I never did get my Ph.D., but my CIDNP proposal was accepted for the requirement.) CIDNP's description in the Oxford dictionary is (surprisingly) in the 'CIDNP' [acronym] entry. CIDNP is C hemically I nduced D ynamic N uclear P olarization. The phenomenon takes a great many "steps" to explain -- as do a fair number of chemical principles (as opposed to talk about chemicals). To fully explain CIDNP requires many items of background and if-then reasoning steps. Which I will skip. But the ultra-cool thing about CIDNP is that the molecules EMIT radiation ("light") but at RADIO wavelengths. You likely have heard of NMR or MRI. The latter is "magnetic resonance imaging". But MRI is NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy done with tomography "on top" (like an x-ray CT scan is computer tomography). I won't explain NMR or MRI. My point is this: NMR, MRI, x-rays, CT, infrared spectroscopy -- these are ALL about ABSORBING LIGHT. NMR (and MRI) absorb -- ABSORB -- radio waves. CIDNP is a phenomenon wherein molecules EMIT radio waves. Yes indeed, they (the molecules) become teensy little radio stations broadcasting -- metaphorically. The phenomenon occurs DURING certain CHEMICAL REACTIONS. Molecules just sitting around or josstling around do not emit radio waves. CIDNP is bizarre, but fully real. More than that I won't explain. But that CIDNP is in this dictionary at all allowed me to be comfortable with giving the dictionary 2 stars. But, of course, with CIDNP being as complex as it is, with so much background ideas to understand, you will certainly not understand it from the dictionary's text (even if the entry is a tad bit longer than its usual small character count*). So, CIDNP is there, but you could not possibly truly understand the phenomenon from the dictionary entry's text.

*arithmetic: (603-minus-10 [see above re. "features" "chronology"]) PAGES DIVIDED by 5,250 ENTIRES = 593 pages / 5250 entries = 0.113 PAGE per entry. Gives you an idea how too-tiny are the texts for most entries (and YES THERE ARE CHEMICAL STRUCTURE diagrams too; and THOSE take up significant page real-estate)

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J. M. JUAREZ
Very useful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 August 2023
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Simply, useful and interesting book of fine quality.
The text is so clear, the concepts and illustrations are so right for a students and teachers of any branch of this science, in particular for chemical engineering.

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David Andrews
Quality
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 October 2023
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I’m an adult university chemistry student. An excellent and comprehensive book.

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