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A somewhat weird question for Chemists

Jamshyd

Jamshyd

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I am looking for a book (or books, or online resources - the more, the merrier) that talks about the behavioural properties (if I may) of compounds, both inorganic and organic.

So I am not looking for a chemistry textbook. Although numbers pertaining to melting point...etc is interesting, I am more interested in the nature of materials - their origins, appearances, smells, idiosyncracies...etc. In other words, I am looking for information on qualitative rather than quantitative qualities of materials - mainly in the elements of the periodic table, but also more complex materials.

I know that the best thing for that is to actually explore all the materials by one's self, but this is of course rather difficult to do.

I am aware that my question pertains more to Alchemy than to modern chemistry. And in fact that is where I am coming from. However, new things have been discovered which did not exist at the time when people wrote alchemical texts, and so I turn to modern chemists for direction.

Thanks a lot in advance - if anyone even replies, haha.
 
Merck, yup, and searching things like sigma and tocris will give you some information on chemical properties, how the look like.

When it comes to inorganic compounds, webelements has what you want, look, smell, history, idiosyncracies.
 
The Merck Index is a good reference, but the CD version of the 13th ed, available as a torrent, tends to be less comprehensive than the hardcover. It's still not a bad refernece for some things, but much is missing.


A really good book for finding out the uses of inorganic chems is the Handbook of inorganic chemicals by Pradyot Patnaik, Ph.D.



The Encylopedia of Physical Science and Technology, 3rd Ed, Inorganic Chemistry has some good info


the CRC handbook is good for physical data, but the older copies had many sections on industrial applications of chemicals. My old leatherback 35th Edition has some great data ( but the section on radioactivity was stangely omitted).


This is a gem: Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia Of Chemical Technology


While somewhat basic, another really good book for general reference, is Chemistry in the Market place by Ben Selinger It's a sort of "what's that made of" type of thing, and is such a good book, I'd recommend buying it. I myself have gone through 2 copies.


You'll find most of these books available via the sciencemadness book threads.
 
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Actually, if you want physical data about pharmacologically active substances then Martindales Extra Pharmacopea is fairly good - gives solubilities, densities appearance etc as well as a couple of paragraphs on the compound's pharmacology. It's exceptionally good at finding journal refs for some weird & wonderful drugs that rarely appear anywhere else
 
Thanks everyone for the awesome replies! I will definitely check out all these resources in time.

Special thanks to PD - I seriously appreciate the effort. I will copy your post if you need to remove it later, but I hope the links will work for a while? since I doubt I'll be able to go through them in a few days...
 
The links should work for awhile as I've merely taken them from existing sites and hosts, mainly from a synthetikal books page I saved long ago, and also from the invaluable book threads at sciencemadness.

If you have problems with anything, or would like something on specific subjects e.g. pharmceutical manufacture, essential oils, transition metals or unusual elements, perfumery, colours, flavours, pigments, plastics, etc, etc, just sing out. I'd suggest getting Kirks first. It will probably answer a lot of your questions.
 
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