Customer Reviews

General Chemistry I as a Second Language: Mastering the Fundamental Skills

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am taking general chemistry 1 in summer school and this book has basically saved me. Like the title suggests, this book concentrates on making you "fluent" with the basic techniques and ideas in Chem 101, increasing both your technical abilities and your overall understanding, and also saving you quite a bit of memorization, by showing you how to figure out what your chem book would have you memorize. It manages to spoon feed you the material with plenty of easy to remember visual concepts, but somehow avoids seeming pedantic or condescending, and also manages to be fairly concise. It is not comprehensive, but after working through the relevant section of the book, you usually have no problem learning from your assigned textbook, since the new material is usually just extensions of what you have already learned, and seems obvious. In my opinion, if they made this text a little more comprehensive and added $150 bucks to the asking price, it would be the ideal chem 101 textbook. Unless you are very confident in your chem abilities, I think it is a mandatory supplement to chem 101.

This book helped me get an A in Chem I. Period. Sure, my text was better than most and my professor was MUCH better than most...but every text will have shortcomings. And most professors aren't that helpful. Let's face it - most don't even care. So, THANK YOU David Klein for lending your expertise to those future professionals who would suffer through Chem I unnecessarily without your help. Do yourself a favor & invest the $20 or so that this book will cost you. Warning: Though you will probably still have to put in about 5-8 hours a week studying for this class, this book will make it worth your while...instead of just sitting there, blankly staring at diagrams, your time will be well (and properly) spent.

It just happened that for my first chemistry class, I got a teacher who doesn't speak English very well, who doesn't explain well and refuses to answer questions. This book is heaven-sent! The author explains every single concept so thoroughly, so simple and straightforward in a way that you can understand. I really recommend reading the Appendix of this book! I learned a new way of balancing equation that helped me out a lot on some of the exams. The practice problems in this book also helped me out a lot, I wouldn't aced one of the exams without doing them! I also recommend reading this book and watching one of the MIT online lecture series titled "principle of chemical science."

Pros:

Easy To Read

Concepts explained in simple, concise sentences

Cons:

Answers to some practice problems are incorrect

As a new student of Chemistry, unable to determine what is accurate/correct & what is not...

Purchased this in anticipation of enrolling into a college level General Chemistry course, with the intent of 'getting ahead' while I had free time. But as I started working throught the Chapter 1 practice questions, I noticed the answer key had some glaring errors (problems 1.9 & 1.17, for example). I'm literally with in the first 6 pages of the book & I, a novice, am finding mathematical errors?

Makes me wonder if I should trust anything I read in this...

This is a wonderful introduction to Organic Chemistry. Klein explains things in a way that can be understood quickly and offers many problems with the solutions available. GREAT!

The reason it gets only 4 stars is after Section 8.8, there are lots and lots of pages (basically blank) with instructions to look in your text book and fill these in. Or to fill them in with notes from class.

This book was a great help for me. It is written in completely unassuming language, and does a great job of explaining the concepts. Gives examples very much like what I saw in my textbook. Definitely worth buying!

I bought this to help me review some basic concepts while preparing for the MCAT. I'd read (and loved) Klein's Organic Chemistry I and II books already.

I mainly needed to review enthalpy and molecular geometry; these chapters helped much more than the shorthand reviews from MCAT prep companies--especially working the geometry problems.

Since I did not spend much time on the first half of the book, I am not that familiar with the sig figs errors other reviewers are mentioning. I know how frustrating that can be, and it's made me want to throw books away before. But I truly think that in this case, ditching the book is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The clarity and helpfulness of his explanations are the important part. There were a few similar issues in the Orgo II book but those few problems paled besides the utility of the vast majority of the book.

Maybe some others can comment on whether/how many errors they found in other chapters?

** I also want to make a special plea that you read in particular the chapters at the end on logarithms and balancing equations. Especially balancing equations. He has an algebraic method that is simple but sooooo brilliant. I just finished that chapter (no mistakes in those problems or chapters 7-9 that I saw) and had to get online to recommend it to all of you. Seriously. He just rocked my stoichiometric world.

I now own all three of Klein's books in the "second language" series, and they are extremely helpful. You need someone who "tells it like it is" and dwells on concepts that the textbooks often take for granted that the student already understands. I hope he writes more books like this.

This book is DEFINITELY helpful for the beginning chemistry student. It explains everything in very simple language, and has plenty of practice problems (complete with answers in the back) to help you solidify your understanding of the topic.

I signed up to take advanced Gen Chem 1 this semester having no background in Chemistry and having been out of college for 10 years. I bought this book before the semester started and spent a couple weeks studying it. Consequently, it wasn't until test 3 of the semester that I really needed to study. It was all review for me up until that point. If I had finished this book, I'm sure I would have been able to coast longer but I couldn't bring myself to deal with enthalpy any earlier than required.

There are some typos in the answer key, but they didn't bother me that much. My only real complaint is that by naming this book Gen Chem 1, they infer that there is a Gen Chem 2 and apparently there is not.