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i would like to get my money back. I was very disappointed in this book as I was lead to believe that it held practical uses rather than the "model car" projects. The book index should have stated that the projects were all for model cars, etc.
After being left to dry on the first half of the book I stopped. The required acids for example are left out of one, except where later is stated not to use a certain acid because its dangerous. Maybe later after I find other fuel cell source to answer my questions I'll finish this one. Bought this book with a keen interest to learn all I can about fuel cells and experimenting hands on is a great way to make it soak in. Most of the experiments in this book are only halfway explained.
It was very exciting to have all of this knowledge available, easy to understand and made it fun too.
It covers a lot of the different fuel cells types. The alkaline fuel cell from the book is one example, it is no longer available from the store.
For a book that was just published this seemed odd and these errors should been caught during proofreading. I was able to find the manufacturer's website and they said they are no longer making it.
This book served as a nice introduction to fuels cells. The part numbers listed were not always able to be found on the website.
These errors are more of an issue with the earlier chapters and with experiments that most people are probably going to skip anyway to get to the more interesting ones. It explains the basic concepts and how to build your own simple fuel cells without getting overly technical.
I had previously only known about PEM and methanol fuel cells and this book has interested me into doing further research on microbial fuel cells.My one issue with the book is with the part numbers listed for items from Fuel Cell Store (which the author mentioned working with to write this book).
Secondarily, it reads like a product catalog for [.]. Even considering that, this book should have never made it into print in its current condition.
Captions are attached to the wrong pictures, pictures have text cut off of them, in fact entire paragraphs repeat the same information contained in the previous paragraph. Typos and blatant errors infest the entire work.
This text provides an exceptionally low level of information on a rather diverse and exciting field. I understand that this is a recently released book, indeed my copy is a first edition.
Frankly it speaks to me of markedly poor copy editing (or in my opinion, no editing whatsoever) and provides a fine example of the failure of companies like McGraw-Hill to continue their production of quality material. I realize that I am probably not the target audience of this work, but it really could have stood to add some information digestible above the 8th-grade reading level.
with poorly written "projects" attached to the product descriptions.I realize that a two star rating on Amazon.com is a rather scathing appraisal, but I feel it is appropriate in this case.
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