Principles of Modern Chemistry Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This book is not as approachable as many general chemistry books; as a previous reviewer has noted, this book is written by physical chemists and the organization and presentation of the concepts in the text reflects this. As a physical chemist, I generally like this text; however, I acknowledge that it's not for everyone and I do have a few critiques.
Students who are not mathematically-inclined will have a hard time with this text: the thermodynamics section, the derivation of the kinetic theory of gases, and some of the derivations of the quantum mechanics material are intimidating! However, students with a firm grounding in math and physics will get much more out of this text than they will out of other standard general chemistry texts like Brown and LeMay (Chemistry The Central Science Tenth Edition).
I would strongly recommend this book for students who have an interest in math and physics or who have already taken an introductory chemistry course and want to understand the phenomena described at a more detailed level. For AP Chemistry or for students who haven't taken intro physics or intro calculus, I would instead recommend the Brown and LeMay book. I feel that its coverage of some of the topics is a bit more superficial, but it is more approachable for students taking chemistry for the first time.
One last note: I dislike the newest edition of this book because they authors reorganized the chapters into a "quantum first" presentation (quantum mechanics is introduced in chapter 4 rather than chapter 15 as it was in the 5th edition). While this organization is suitable for some full-out physical chemistry courses, it is not appropriate for this book. If this book is to be used as a general chemistry book, consider doing the chapters out of order: start with the history of chemistry chapters, skip to the thermo stuff, and come back to quantum later. It's much easier to grasp intuitively if you work from the macro to the micro and not the other way around.

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This edition has been updated to reflect the continuing developments taking place in chemistry. It emphasises the total scientific process placing general chemistry into a complete perspective for science and engineering students.

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