The New Data Book – take a tour

The first edition of the new look data book has been released on the OCC. Have you got your copy yet?

At first, the data book seems pretty much as the same as the old one, but after some inspection, you will be able to see some major changes, some additions and so not so major (subtle) changes.

This blog posting aims to give you a flavour of these changes:

• Major changes

Table 10 – Covalent bond length s

This is now contains a grid for single bonds and a list for double bonds. The grid as the names of elements on both sides and you look up a bond length according to the elements it is between. We like this as it contains much more detail however a word of caution. As it is only for single bonds, it is possible that a student will read an incorrect bond length, eg, the C==O double bond (the double bonds are found in a different list). It is also possible that a student will misread the grid – where as the old ‘list’ format made this much harder.

Table 11- Bond enthalpies and average bond enthalpies

The same is true for this data –it is now presented in a table

Table 14 – Common oxidation numbers for the group 3 ions – this, in my opinion is a welcome addition. As is table 15, the ‘spectrochemical series’.

The ionisation constants of water has been added as table 23 – this is handy to see how Kw changes with temperature.

Table 29 now has a triangular bonding diagram – a ‘van Arkel-Ketelaar Triangle of Bonding’ – a van what?!  Well, please don’t me spoil the surprise. Look it up and you will understand what I mean!

For information on recycling, see table 30, ‘resin identification codes’ and ‘solubility product constant s (K_sp) is a welcome addition.

Finally, something I personally find interesting is table 36, the binding energy curve.

• Minor changes

Table 1 – some relevant equations – the list has been expanded, as has table 2, physical constants and unit conversions.

We now see a table 25, ‘Activity series’ – you may wonder what this is if you are from Europe or Asia – well, you would probably call it the ‘Reactivity series’ –do you know what I am on about now?

• Subtle changes

Table 2 – STP has changed. How can this be true, how can a constant change. Well, the devil is in the detail. Standard pressure has now been change to 100kPa to align with IUPAC, where as the ‘old’ standard pressure was 101kPa – a small change but it has a big effect. The volume of 1 mole of gas is now 22.7 dm³ mol ^-1. There is also SATP (instead of RTP, SATP = standard atmospheric  temperature and pressure).

What do you think? You can download the data book from the OCC so why don’t you?

Can you spot any mistakes or is there anything that you are not sure of?

Please let me know and I will feed back to the IB.