Chemistry: Principles and Reactions (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac) [Hardcover]

William L. Masterton (Author), Cecile N. Hurley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 16, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0534408788 | ISBN-13: 978-0534408787 | Edition: 005

This new edition of CHEMISTRY: PRINCIPLES AND REACTIONS continues to provide students with the "core" material essential to understanding the principles of general chemistry. Masterton and Hurley cover the basics without sacrificing the essentials, appealing to several markets. Appropriate for either a one- or two-semester course, CHEMISTRY: PRINCIPLES AND REACTIONS, Fifth Edition is three hundred pages shorter than most general chemistry texts and lives up to its long-standing reputation as THE student-oriented text. Though this text is shorter in length than most other General Chemistry books, it is not lower in level and with the addition of the large volume of content provided by the revolutionary GENERAL CHEMISTRY INTERACTIVE 3.0 CDROM that is included with every copy, it has a depth and breadth rivaling much longer books.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

William L. Masterton received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1953. Two years later, he arrived at the University of Connecticut, where he taught general chemistry and a graduate course in chemical thermodynamics. He received numerous teaching awards; the one of which he is most proud came form the Student Senate at UConn. Bill wrote, with co-author Emil Slowinski, the all-time best selling general chemistry textbook, CHEMICAL PRINCIPLES, which sold well over one and a half million copies. Bill has also written a definitive account of the Lizzie Borden case entitled LIZZIE DIDN'T DO IT. Bill's field of research, solution thermodynamics, prepared him well for making maple syrup each March at the family farmhouse in New Hampshire.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 756 pages
• Publisher: Brooks Cole; 005 edition (January 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0534408788
• ISBN-13: 978-0534408787
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #624,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Less is more; BEST inorganic chemistry book I've seen., June 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Chemistry: Principles and Reactions, Third Edition (Hardcover)

At first glance, this book looks too abstract, geared more towards high school students. Upon closer examination, I found that the book is extremely well-organized and written in the most concise way possible without losing the essence of the subject.

Only other chemistry book that I think is comparable in quality is "Chemistry 2nd ed" by McMurry. However, if you compare side by side, you will see that the exact same materials are generally discussed in much more concise form with no wordy explanations in Masterton's writing.

I think the book received some negative comments from other reviewers because it appears over simplified; however, I think all the important materials are covered extremely well at college-level. If you believe in efficiency, definitely use this book. However, if you want to look/feel sophisticated, scholarly or pretentious, there's a lot of wordy books out there.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful General Chemistry Text, January 18, 2011

By 

U of M Math Student - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Chemistry: Principles and Reactions (Hardcover)

I used this text in my AP Chemistry course a couple of years back, and now that I'm in college and planning on taking some physical chemistry courses I decided that having this book as a reference would be good. So I bought the 5th edition of this text for a cent. I distinctly remember this book being great for a couple of reasons. The first is the size.

The reviewer who said that this book must only contain a forth of the information that other textbooks have because it is a forth of the size is clearly mistaken. In my own field of study (math), we know better than to say such nonsense. The reason for this book's slimness is because the authors have taken care to present the material in a precise, clear, and unified fashion, as opposed to dribbling on and describing the same thing five different ways. If you don't believe me, take a look at the table of contents. This book's size is not indicative of the volume of content contained.

Another reason why I liked this book so much is that it gives a unified approach to chemistry. Sections like gasses will often come back and support new sections to provide insight. One example of this is how the authors use the ideal gas law alongside the theory of vapor pressure to properly analyze how gasses and liquids behave together in a a closed environment. The author's do not present a collection of party tricks. The student will never get into the mindset of "ok, i have this type of problem, and so I reference this equation to solve it" without really knowing the material. Another example is that the authors do not present every single variation on the ideal gas law (Charles, Boyle, etc...). Instead, the authors present the ideal gas law in its entirety, and the student sees that all of the others are trivial byproducts when some variables are held constant. By not wasting pages talking about all of those variations, we have a slimmer text that better teaches the student what is "actually" going on.

Another thing I liked about this text is that often they will have a series of examples that are worked out in full detail whenever an important topic is discussed. Part (a) might just be a trivial computation that anyone could solve by reading the text, but part (d) or (e) will be an intricate problem that brings together many topics previously discussed and shows how they all work together to solve an interesting chemical problem. This is good because chemistry itself is not divided up into nice chapters, and it also teaches students to make connections between what they had previously learned and what they are currently learning (hence, this adds to the "unified approach").

The last thing I would like to comment on is the quality and quantity of exercises. I learned that the best way to learn chemistry is to do chemistry. So no matter how well written this text is, it fails if it does not have good problems. Thankfully, the problems in the text are relevant to what you learned in the chapter, and they range in difficulty. There are a great number of problems too, and so if a student is having problem with Gibb's Free energy (for example), then there will be a series of problems that the student can work on if he or she wished to get better. By the end of the problems relating to whatever section they correspond to, the student will no longer have trouble, and I think this testifies to how well this text works. Often, the problems will bring together several branches of chemistry, and there are many interesting problems that are not simply of the "drill and kill" style.

Overall, this is a great text, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great general chemistry education. For those of you who might be thinking that this text is at too low of a level for college, I put my chemistry knowledge against many of my fellow students here at UMich, and my education and understanding beats most of theirs. So I would say that this book if probably better than most of the current ones used in college courses today.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will help you pass!, September 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Study Guide/Workbook for Chemistry: Principles and Reactions (Third Edition) (Spiral-bound)

i bought this book to help me pass honors chem in high school cuz it corresponds with our text and was highly recommended. it has a great sort of outline for each chapter where you can take notes in a fill in the blank form, and the stepbystep instructions and problems are great.