Customer Reviews

Atoms and Molecules: An Introduction for Students of Physical Chemistry

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In days long past - before there were even Powerpoint slides - students in chemistry were required to take P-Chem (physical chemistry) and deal with the necessary sections on atomic and molecular electronic structure. You were left with two choices - highly impenetrable advanced texts that assumed you had more knowledge of calculus, group theory, and matrix algebra than you did at that stage in your studies or watered-down, obtuse texts that would not give you the skills your tuition dollars were paying for you to acquire.

"Atoms and Molecules" was a middle ground. It was the text used in my my P-Chem class and it served me well (I got an A so perhaps I'm biased). Elementary electronic structure is covered well enough so that when you get to "real" quantum mechanics texts later you're OK. And if your interest in the field ends with the course you'll walk away with enough knowledge to hold your own in a discussion with any computational chemist you'll encounter.

I strongly recommend (and prefer) Cohen-Tannoudji's Quantum Mechanics for the truly interested, but this is a good book when you have to take the course and need a good basic grounding.

And yes, there is math involved, but to paraphrase Robert Heinlein - "Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house." Math - and the ability to do good math - is a requisite for all scientists and being evasive about problems involving it simply won't do.

A very quantitative and somewhat confusing text. My good friend hung himself after looking over it for 15 minutes. We cremated him and Karplus together.