Nuffield Advanced Science: Book of Data (First Edition)

This Nuffield Advanced Science Book of Data was a compilation of basic physical data in SI units for use during the Nuffield Advanced courses in Physics, Physical Science, and Chemistry. The book included all the data required specifically for the Nuffield programmes but the book was deliberately not tied too closely to the requirements of these particular courses.

This made the book useful for students following other courses and provided flexibility to allow for future developments.

The hope was that by constant reference to numerical data, students would learn to be more critical of both theory and experiment. The expectation was that by learning to work with tabulated data rather than committing facts to memory, the students would stand more chance of coping with the rising tide of information.

Most of the data and the mathematical tables were rounded to three figure accuracy, since this is enough for the slide rule calculations that were commonplace at the time the book was published.

The information was abstracted from existing tables and handbooks and converted to SI units. Wherever possible, two such sources were consulted. This revealed a surprisingly large number of more than trivial discrepancies.

Contents

The book contained a large number of tables arranged under these headings.

*Foreword

*Introduction

*How to use this book

*Units, conventions, and symbols

*Conversion factors for non-SI units

*Length, speed, time, mass: some useful values

*Physical properties of elements

*Nuclear physics

*The electromagnetic spectrum

*Electrons in atoms

*Sizes of atoms and molecules

*Thermochemical and other properties of elements and compounds

*Physical, thermochemical and other properties of inorganic compounds

*Physical, thermochemical and other properties of organic compounds

*Thermochemical and electrochemical data for ions

*Miscellaneous data on chemical equilibria

*Properties of solid materials

*Physical properties of liquids

*Physical properties of gases

*Temperatures and the 1968 International Practical Temperature Scale

*Equations and formulae: physics, chemistry, and mathematics

*Tables (exponentials, logarithms, powers of x and trigonometric functions)

*References

*Index

*Physical and mathematical constants

*Periodic Table