Customer Reviews

General Chemistry: Principles and Applications

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

While there is a great deal of convergence about the concepts taught in a one year general chemistry course, the way those principles are taught, to what depth, and the kind of vocabulary used in teaching them varies from text to text. This allows the authors to focus their teaching in ways appropriate to different kinds of students.

This text is geared towards a one year course in general chemistry for students going on to careers in engineering, biology, and other technical fields. The vocabulary of the text is adapted to build up comfort with the technical terms of chemistry and familiarity in working with formulae rather than being content with intuitions about chemistry. It also has a nice addition of the actual people whose names are given to various laws and concepts in chemistry. When the name is presented there is also a picture and a sentence or two about who they were. I enjoyed this a great deal because it brings the text to life a bit more.

Pedagogically there are several nice helps that show the experience the authors have in teaching real life students and the kinds of misconceptions they tend to have. In the margins there are notes called "Keep in Mind" that help students avoid those common traps that come to easily to beginners in any field. There are well chosen diagrams, drawings, and pictures that aid in teaching rather than being content with decoration. The text also has notes entitled "Are You Wondering" that help students deal with questions that are probably arising in their mind as they are working through these concepts for the first time.

The problems in the back are grouped according to the concepts taught in the chapter and the problems numbered in red have the answers provided in the back of the book. They also provide an Integrative Example that shows the concepts in a more real life problem. After these come a series of integrative problems and advanced exercises. These are followed with feature problems and self-assessment exercises. When learning these concepts it is essential to do lots of work with them in order to be sure you understand them and to develop comfort with working with them. It will make learning later in the book easier and allow you to take more from the course after it is completed.

This is an excellent text for students who have had at least a bit of chemistry before tackling this course. And for technical students it will be more rewarding than other more basic texts even though they both cover similar ground. The more technical approach taken here will be more enriching to them.

I have taken many chemistry courses throughout my highschool and college career. This book has by far been the worst chemistry book I have ever read. The extremely poor organization of examples and confusing diction is not helpful to anyone taking a general chemistry course. You will have a much more successful time using your old highschool chemistry books as references.

The text assumes that the reader has a background of at least one year of high school chemistry. It would be best for students to have two years of high school chemistry before approaching the more complex concepts introduced in the textbook. However, there are some nice details about the scientists involved in the scientific discoveries introduced. Notes to students and instructors are useful and the example problems are excellent. The self-assessment exercises are an excellent tool for the student to evaluate their progress. The exercises at the end of each chapter dramatically increase in difficulty as one works through each section. Some of the most difficult problems require skills not introduced in the text. Compounding this issue is the fact that many problems worked out in the solutions manual employ shortcuts that confuse even very bright students, along with some typos.

The Petrucci 9th Edition has undergone a significant number of changes from the 8th Edition. The 9th Edition suffers, to some extent, from some cumulative effects from numerous revisions. For instance there was a section added of Organic Chemistry early in the text, but it was too ambitious with too little background given to benefit the average student. In light of the recent revisions, it would be useful to reorganize the order of the chapters to facilitate learning. For instance, much of the information concerning the Periodic Table would be more useful earlier in the textbook.

The text is designed for a one year Freshman Chemistry course, but an instructor should understand that all of the material will not fit easily into two semesters. The instructor then has the option to focus on areas of their personal interest in greater detail than typically available in the Freshman text and reduce some of the detail in other sections. Exposure to some of the more advanced material in the textbook should be interesting to motivated students. Overall, the Petrucci 9th Ed. is a good Freshman textbook for students with a strong science background.

I have taken several chemistry courses in high school and college. However i find this book to be very difficult in understanding. I find myself refering back to my old notes and books. There are surely more chemistry books out there that could explain chemistry itself in a more efficient manner. This book does not contain any clear cut directions on how to solve many problems, in addition to containing many problems in the exercises section which was also not explained the lecture part of the book. The practice problems also does not help in solving many of the problems because it is simple and straightforward as opposed to the exercises which is very misleading and unclear. I, as a science major, do not recommend this book unless of course you are required to purchase it by a professor who does not care for you to pass the class.

Incoherence is not an opinion but rather a fact when it comes to associating that word with this book. Petrucci although as a long history with writing chemistry textbooks, still has not been able to provide an adequate explanation to some of the MOST basic concepts of chemistry.

I think he is probably a brilliant chemist as the questions in this book can be challenging; I found them trivial however. This is not because I deem myself intelligent (that goes without saying :) but the fact of the matter is that I had better books to rely on when I was studying undergraduate chemistry.

Silberberg and Malone's Basic Concepts of Chemistry where to two that got me through. I initially was given this book to study from and I found some of the chapters deadly boring.

How Petrucci explains and expounds and Acid-Base, and Quantum Chemistry is satisfactory, however organic chemistry, the concept of the mole and redox are chapters that accentuate the inarticulate nature and the overall dullness of the book.

This is not good becase fundamentally chemical reactions are about the transference, absorption and dissipation of energy which is normally expressed as the "movement of electrons". One of the principle topics in chemistry which first introduces this is redox.

Secondly the concept of the Mole and basic calculations are required and if an individual has only this book to rely on then there is not much hope that the student would get a good enough grasp of what is at hand.

Better Books:


Basic Concepts of Chemistry by Malone. A tried and tested book which takes a layman or (laywoman for that matter) and makes a chemist out of them.

Chemistry by Silberberg: very detailed explanations on various concepts.

Chemistry by Olmsted, if you are short on cash and need a book that does both of the above, then this is it. It is a fairy good book.

This book is required for my chemistry 1 course. I have taken 2 tests, and so far I have a "D" average in this class. The class is online, so I'm relying on this book to learn chemistry. As you can tell from my average, I have learned nothing from this book. I can't understand why colleges always require these VERY over-priced books that sucks. This book is the worst chemistry book that I have ever read - and I have read at least 7 chemistry books. Don't waste your money on this piece of garbage. If it wasn't so expensive, I would use it as a door-stop. By the way, the solutions manual that you can buy as a companion to this book sucks too.

The textbook itself is awful, probably one of the worst I've ever read for Chemistry but the solutions manual is very thorough and helpful

This book is terrible. It's full of useless examples, and it does a terrible job of explaining basic concepts. I found a 20 year old general chemistry book with very few illustrations to be more useful than this book. My suggestion is to talk your chemistry department in getting a new book!

I think that this book is very hard to follow. Although the pictures and diagrams are good, the text is confusing. This was not a good reference to help me in my general chem course.

although this book is used for teaching general chemistry at many universities and is praised by the proffesors it bears within it tongue twisting sentences that relay less concepts then the number of words used to convey them. personally i learned more chemistry from my seventh grade teacher than this book.