Chemistry: The Central Science (11th Edition) [Hardcover]

Theodore E. Brown (Author), H. Eugene H LeMay (Author), Bruce E. Bursten (Author), Catherine Murphy (Author), Patrick Woodward (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0136006175 | ISBN-13: 978-0136006176 | Publication Date: January 8, 2008 | Edition: 11

Chemistry: The Central Science is the most trusted book on the market--its scientific accuracy, clarity, innovative pedagogy, functional problem-solving and visuals set this book apart.  Brown, LeMay, and Bursten teach students the concepts and skills they need without overcomplicating the subject.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

THEODORE L. BROWN received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1956. Since then, he has been

a member of the faculty of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he is now Professor of Chemistry,

Emeritus. He served as Vice Chancellor for Research, and Dean, The Graduate College, from 1980 to 1986, and as

Founding Director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology from 1987 to

1993. Professor Brown has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow and has been awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1972 he was awarded the American Chemical Society Award for Research in Inorganic

Chemistry, and received the American Chemical Society Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of

Inorganic Chemistry in 1993. He has been elected a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement

of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 

H. EUGENE LEMAY, JR., received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Pacific Lutheran University

(Washington) and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1966 from the University of Illinois (Urbana). He then joined the

faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is currently Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus. He has enjoyed

Visiting Professorships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at the University College of Wales in

Great Britain, and at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor LeMay is a popular and effective teacher,

who has taught thousands of students during more than 35 years of university teaching. Known for the clarity of his

lectures and his sense of humor, he has received several teaching awards, including the University Distinguished

Teacher of the Year Award (1991) and the first Regents’ Teaching Award given by the State of Nevada Board of

Regents (1997).

 

BRUCE E. BURSTEN received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1978. After two

years as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Texas A&M University, he joined the

faculty of The Ohio State University, where he rose to the rank of Distinguished University Professor. In

2005, he moved to his present position at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville as Distinguished

Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Professor Bursten has been a

Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research

Fellow, and he has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At

Ohio State he has received the University Distinguished Teaching Award in 1982 and 1996, the Arts and

Sciences Student Council Outstanding Teaching Award in 1984, and the University Distinguished Scholar

Award in 1990. He received the Spiers Memorial Prize and Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in

2003, and the Morley Medal of the Cleveland Section of the American Chemical Society in 2005. He was

elected President of the American Chemical Society for 2008. In addition to his teaching and service

activities, Professor Bursten's research program focuses on compounds of the transition-metal and

actinide elements. 

 

CATHERINE J. MURPHY received two B.S. degrees, one in Chemistry and one in Biochemistry, from the

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1986. She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of

Wisconsin in 1990. She was a National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at

the California Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1993. In 1993, she joined the faculty of the University of South

Carolina, Columbia, where she is currently the Guy F. Lipscomb Professor of Chemistry. Professor Murphy has

been honored for both research and teaching as a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Research Fellow, a Cottrell Scholar of the Research Corporation, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award

winner and a subsequent NSF Award for Special Creativity. She has also received a USC Mortar Board Excellence

in Teaching Award, the USC Golden Key Faculty Award for Creative Integration of Research and Undergraduate

Teaching, the USC Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the USC Outstanding Undergraduate

Research Mentor Award. Since 2006, Professor Murphy has served as a Senior Editor to the Journal of Physical

Chemistry. Professor Murphy’s research program focuses on the synthesis and optical properties of inorganic

nanomaterials, and on the local structure and dynamics of the DNA double helix.

 

Contributing Author

 

PATRICK M. WOODWARD received B.S. degrees in both Chemistry and Engineering from Idaho State

University in 1991. He received a M.S. degree in Materials Science and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Oregon State

University in 1996. He spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics at Brookhaven

National Laboratory. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at The Ohio State University where he

currently holds the rank of Associate Professor. He has enjoyed visiting professorships at the University of

Bordeaux, in France, and the University of Sydney, in Australia. Professor Woodward has been an Alfred P. Sloan

Foundation Research Fellow and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award winner. He currently serves as an

Associate Editor to the Journal of Solid State Chemistry and as the director of the Ohio REEL program, an NSF

funded center that works to bring authentic research experiments into the laboratories of 1st and 2nd year chemistry

classes in 15 colleges and universities across the state of Ohio. Professor Woodward’s research program focuses on

understanding the links between bonding, structure and properties of solid state inorganic functional materials.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1232 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 11 edition (January 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0136006175
• ISBN-13: 978-0136006176
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.6 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Chemistry > General & Reference

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars overall, a very strong introduction to chemistry, July 13, 2010

By 

Y. Zhu - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chemistry: The Central Science (11th Edition) (Hardcover)

Overall, this book provides an excellent introduction to chemistry.

Although the explanations are not perfect, the book does a superb job introducing the reader to chemistry. True, it is somewhat difficult to read at times, but it's also very interesting as the writers provide MANY MANY real world applications and interesting examples. I also really like how the book has a high emphasis on giving examples. Chemistry is not like subjects such as history or biology - chemistry involves PROBLEM-SOLVING, THINKING, AND APPLICATION. By going through many examples of problems, the book does an excellent job honing such valuable skills many students typically lack. While sometimes the explanations are a little dull / difficult to understand, this book from my experience is A LOT easier to read than other more advanced chemistry textbooks.

So, in essence, while this book is not quite as advanced or thorough as some of the more advanced intro chemistry books, this book provides a VERY strong overview of general chemistry for the student, and overall is pretty easy to understand. While this book is not perfect, I am certainly very content with it. It is no surprise to me that this book is so widely used and wildly popular among students and instructors.

42 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars clear, well explained text., August 22, 2009

By 

Primadona (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Chemistry: The Central Science (11th Edition) (Hardcover)

Before you spend any more time reading the review below, do yourself a favor if you plan on taking organic chemistry. Well actually do yourself AND your classmates a favor. Get this book and study all the 3chapters it has on bonding (hybridisation,VESPR, etc). In that case, you wouldn't be asking crazy questions and slowing everyone when you start organic chemistry. Problem is, if you don't have an instructor who can explain it really, really well, you'll be lost. This book is better than an instructor. Most of my classmates are lost right now and one girl told me she'd rather have me teach because she understrands it better when i explain stuff. This book tackles that subject matter better than any other textbook or review aid i've come across. I mean better than all those ochem introductory review books. if that isn't enough reason to convince you to get this book and study it, then read whatever i wrote below.

Since most of the reviews here are based on how fast the item got shipped and what not, i thought i'd write a review based on the content of the book. i haven't gone through the whole book. I bought it for my chem 2 class this summer and i really didn't pay much attention to it because my teacher was a collosal joke. He did not teach a darn thing. First day, he gave a quiz based on chem 1 which i took long ago but i managed to ace it, 2nd day of class he was sick so we went home early, 3rd day, we had a substitute because poor ol' guy was in the hospital. 4th day, he talked about a take home final and we used lecture time for lab, 5th day, final based on stuff from chem 1(again, i had a 100% so i knew i had my A, i used to tutor chem 1 between 03 to 2005 except i switched majors and forgot everything). days 6-8, well, he told us we were done on day 5 so we didn't show up These were supposed to be 6hour lecture days on saturdays and 3.5hour lab days on sunday (don't even ask me what we did in lab). I didn't care because i was taking cell and molecular bio alongside this and i did well in the final so i told myself so long as i got an A in chem 2, i'm fine. Well, i did get an A but didn't know squat on chem 2.

Enough about my rant but considering i have to take the mcat along with orgo this fall, i figured i better hit the book. I actually thought this book was awful during class section because it integrates stuff from the previous chapter and if you don't remember, well, you're kinda screwed. Now that i've read through it, i think it's a good ting. If you should start from scratch, this is the best chem text available. So i went back and started from chapter 2 or 3, did a quick revision and then i started to progress with the other chapters. The author really explains the concepts well and after each new concept, he has those worked example afterward along with a do it yourself example that has the answer right there so you can compare it.
Honestly, you can study from the book so instead of me wasting over an hour driving to and fro, i coulda stayed home and read the book instead.
2. It has little bullet points of tackling some things that look complicated. i studied the vspr model and lewis dots from this book and now i'm a pro.
3.if you carefully read once and do all the examples in the book, you should be able to get ALL of the end of chapter questions right.
4.There were times i thought certain things could've been summarized by the author so i skimmed over it. well, i got to the next chapter and realized i had to come back to read what i skipped and when i did do that, stuff made sense.
5.One thing i love and hate at the same time: it builds on things earlier discussed in the book. i love it because once i started to self study, doing those intergrative excercises makes me know i understand the concepts. if you haven't taken chem in a long time and have forgotten everything, this book will make it easy. The bad thing about the intergrative excercises is that i've forgotten everything i learned about thermochemistry, it's been about 5years now and i kinda skipped that chapter hoping to come back to it once i do bonding so on intergrative excercises that uses thermochemistry, i skip.
6.It has lots of visual diagrams and pictures to help you understand stuff.
one of the reason why i gave 4 stars is that i'm not completely done with everything, also, for the part of the text where it talks about double bonds in hybridrization, it would have been nice if the author had visually illustrated that there is a unhybridized p orbital. I mean it has a bunch of pictures and diagram for double bond but let's just say i had to read that paragraph twice and then come to the next paragraph to get it. turns out the diagram was at the bottom of the page. Normally it's at the side when it talks about the concept.

Overall, this book is a great chem text. i used zhumdall's chemistry text back in 2003 and geez...don't let me go there. My plan was to sell this right after class ended because i never keep textbooks. Well, I plan on keeping this one at least till next year when i'm done with my exam prep. i think i'll refer to this booka i study for the mcat. I've never seen a text that explains things in such an easy to understand way. I didn't buy the study guide. if you read through it,you should understand it to get all the answers in the back right. This isn't the kind of textbook that tests you on stuff not explained.It has TONS of examples in the chapters. You don't need to buy any supplemental chem book to help you.
Nuff said.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Chem book!, February 28, 2010

By 

jjon - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chemistry: The Central Science (11th Edition) (Hardcover)

This Chemistry book is great! It is surprisingly easy to read and understand. It is really helping me with my chem class. For some reason i enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy reading harry potter.