A Manual of Chemical Analysis: Qualitative & Quantitative (Classic Reprint)

Royal School of Mines now the Royal College of Science with the request that he might be taught to do copper. He did not want his boy to waste his time learning about oxygen and hydrogen, and all that, but he wished him simply to learn to do copper. Although seldom expressed with such refreshing candour, the desire to do analysis without learning more than the minimum amount of chemistry is still very prevalent; and, unfortunately, chemical analysis is a subject which may be, and frequently is, taught and practised in such a manner as to degrade it to the level of a purely mechanical and often quite unintelligible series of ruleof-thumb operations. I hope that the student whose aspirations rise no higher than to learn to do analysis in this fashion, will not find this book suitable for him. I have done my best to make it as little of a cram-book as possible, but have endeavoured to teach analytical chemistry as well as analysis that is, the theoretical as well as the practical side of the subject. With this object in view, I have carefully avoided the use of those symbolic abbreviated expressions slang formula, they might be termed, such as H2O oxalic acid, H2T tartaric acid, HA acetic acid, etc, which are becoming so common, and which so far as the student is concerned, foster those very evils of cramming which we as teachers are striving to combat. If such symbols as these are permitted and recognised, why not H2S, HN, H3P, for sulphuric, nitric, and phosphoric acids respectively? And then, perhaps, some such hieroglyphic as H2S, HN, for sulphurous and nitrous acids. About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings.