Customer Reviews

Chemistry Workbook For Dummies

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The best way to learn a subject, especially a subject with the reputation of difficulty that chemistry has, is to be engaged while learning. The quartet of authors (Mikulecky, Brutlag, Gilman, and Peterson)of this workbook have organized the material to keep the student actively involved while studying rather than reading a myriad of chemistry facts. I found this a super stand alone book for tutoring students having difficulties with chemistry.

This Could be a good book IF the editor (or author) had taken a few minutes to proof read it for errors. There are content errors in the text (e.g "celsius temperature equals a Kelvin temperature plus 273 degrees" NOT... Kelvin equals Celsius plus 273. And the book is riddles with errors like this. A signficant number the the ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS are wrong... just flat out wrong. It looks to me like there is a lot of transpostion of information... c for K, etc.

Maybe that was the author's intent. Make so many errors that, as we are working through the book we have to double and triple check against other sources because we don't trust the answers in the book... either that or the author really is a Dummie.

This book is great and fun, but there seem to be A LOT of mistakes when it comes to the Questions and Answers in each chapter.

In Chapter Three alone there are four glaring errors which make you first question your own sanity (ie. "I'm CERTAIN 2000 degrees Celsius equals 2273 Kelvin!") and then question what you're being taught in the book (ie. "2000 degrees Celsius IS 2273 Kelvin! Why are they telling me it's 1727K?!?!").

It makes me wonder what the proofreader was drinking when going through the text...

As a former chemistry major in college my daughter expected me to be reasonably competent as a chemistry tutor so I decided to bone up on the subject. After working through the entire textbook I was quite disappointed at the lack of quality control. At first I thought I was the dummy but after carefully reviewing the questions and answers it is clear that the author and proof readers didn't do their due diligence. I would suggest looking elsewhere for a more professionally written workbook.

Not even out of the first chapter and errors in units have been encountered (prob 20). I don't trust these people to teach me chemistry!!

I use the dummies workbooks all the time for cram sessions. They're normally really good, they make you go why wasn't it explained like that the first time?!? But this one was not "dummy proof" and it was filled with errors. However it's still better than alot of the guides out there.