Customer Reviews

Introductory Chemistry (3rd Edition)

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

 

 

A previous reviewer has his facts wrong --- both Silver and Russo have PhDs in chemistry. Here's a blurb about Silver and Russo from the publisher:

Steve Russo is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at Cornell University and the Director of Organic Laboratories. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor at Indiana University. While there, he designed and implemented a state-of-the-art computer resource center for the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. He received his B.S. in chemistry from St. Francis College and his Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry from Cornell University. He is a member of the American Chemical Society and has been a recipient of the Dupont Teaching Award, Clark Teaching Award, and the Amoco Distinguished Teaching Award. Mike Silver is a Professor of Chemistry at Hope College. He received his B.S. in chemistry from Fairleigh Dickinson University and his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Cornell University. He is a member of the American Chemical Society, past president of the West Michigan Section, and a member of the Council of Undergraduate Research. He has received the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award for excellence in teaching and research and the Provost's Award for Teaching Excellence. Currently he is involved in collaborative research with the Dow Corning Chemical Company.

In my experience, this is one of the few chemistry textbooks which explains WHY as opposed to simply presenting isolated formulas and factoids for students to memorize. It is terrific for visual-spatial learners and for students who want the big picture as well as the details. The organization of the textbook is logical, with one subject leading into the next.

This book presents a excelent introduction to chemistry. There is no economy of space.The concepts are very well explained, in a conversational style. It is hard for you not to understand. Also it is very well and beautifully ilustrated.I hope there will be a review to include more subjects.

If it wasn't for this book I wouldn't have passed. It gives you so many extra exercises to help you understand the principles behind chemistry. Definatly goes hand in hand with the hardcover.

The book came actually a lot quicker than i was expecting and it made me very happy. the book was in good condition and there are no problems at all :) very satisfied thank you :D

The book arrived in the mail quickly and before its estimated time frame. On top of that the book is in excellent condition! Thank you!

BOOK CAME IN ON TIME AND IN GREAT CONDITION, AS EXPECTED! I WOULD DEFINITELY PURCHASE FROM THIS VENDOR AGAIN!

After using this book for my sophomore year in high school I decided to read about the authors, and the day I saw that they had PhD's in TEACHING CHEMISTRY was the day that intelligent life ceased to exist. This book does teach about chemistry, but in the most unorthodox way that you could not even imagine what they do. They give you five hundred definitions on everything. All this does is make it more and more confusing. Please, just give me a basic definition and if I need something explained I'll ask my teacher, who deserves his doctorate in teaching chemistry.

Another bad thing about this book is that is puts all the information that would take five lines up text into a long drawn out three page essay on something in real life. I do not care about that garbage! All I want is the information and I don't want to waste a half hour trying to find it in some stupid example I could care less about. 99% of the time I was reading the book I was getting a headache because all I could think was GET TO THE POINT ALREADY! One time I was making sure I wrote an acid base reaction correctly so I decided to check the book like I would in any other course. But in my fatal attempts to check my work I found out that the only acid base reaction in this text book is the equilibrium of water, and that doesn't help me one bit. If your wondering why I'm in such a bad mood right now, it's because I just stopped studying my final chemistry exam.

Stoicheometry is very a very simple concept that a cave man could understand, but the way this book does it makes half the class perplexed beyond what was thought to be chemically possible. If you're someone that memorizes math equations instead of understanding them, this book is not something to look forward to.

All it does is write out and explain the equation in the most confusing way. I did not have a problem with this because I never had to look at what they put, but when I tried to use it to explain something to a classmate I ended up closing the book and drawing out a much simpler version on a piece of paper. The only problem I ran into was that my teacher was worried about the lack of work I was showing on my free response problems, because I did not do it the long drawn out way the book tells you to. Consequently, I ended up having to do the problem my way, and then translating it on to the answer sheet the way the book tells you to do it.