The authors' careful attention to pacing and narrative structure has resulted in a clear, accessible and authoritative text that is less intimidating to students than other physical chemistry texts. At the same time, Physical Chemistry does not sacrifice the mathematical rigor and comprehensiveness necessary for this course. Completely revised and updated the 4e now includes expanded coverage of core topics such as new developments in laser spectroscopy, superconductivity and quantum mechanics. The new edition also boasts two colours, resulting in clearer and more attractive artwork and enhancement of the book's organisational structures. A popular feature of previous editions has been retained - the historical vignettes and brief biographies of famous physical chemists which help students see how theories have developed and add further interest to the course. A superior CD Rom accompanying the text offers students exciting multimedia features to facilitate learning and includes interactive simulations, animations, graphs and exercises designed to illustrate many of the key concepts of the book.
--This text refers to an alternate
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent physical chemistry text,
By A.Reader1 (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Physical Chemistry (Hardcover)
Don't let some of the previous reviews dissuade you from this book. It's excellent.Laidler et al. cover all the major areas of undergraduate p-chem: gas laws, KMT, thermodynamics, chemical equilibria, solutions, phase diagrams, electrochemistry, transport processes, chemical kinetics, surface chem. The topic order follows traditional macroscopic physical chemisty. i.e. gas laws come first, then thermo, followed by equilibria, solutions etc. They also provide chapters on quantum chem, molecular spectroscopy, chemical bonding, statistical mechanics. They include all this and yet still manage to walk the fine line between too much and not enough theory. Their explanations and diagrams are always clear & direct. I disagree with reviewer (below) who says there's not enough detail for chem majors. The level of detail is just right. As another reviewer mentioned, the chemical kinetics chapters are very good - something most p-chem books mess up. This is because K.J. Laidler has written the standard book in the field for upper level and grad. students: Chemical Kinetics (3rd Edition), ISBN 0060438622. They summarize equations for each chapter and provide RELEVANT (i.e. for undergrads) references to other books. The problems in the book tend to be easy. The quantum/bonding/spectroscopy/stat. mech. chapters (11-15) are not deep enough for full semester courses in these areas. But, then, that's not their intent. They're introductions. Well written, too. I read these chapters to get a general understanding of these 'microscopic' areas for my upper year courses. <update to this review> I wrote the above re: the 1st edition 'cause that's what I own. This fourth edition continues the tradition of clarity with nice glossy pages and makes effective use of a third color for emphasis. But they've added quite a bit of new material which makes it physically very heavy. All these additions reduce some of the 'purity' of the original which focused on fundamental principles. Since there are so many good books covering advanced p-chem topics, the authors could easily drop chapters 11-15 (inclusive) with no loss in continuity. Or put this material on a CD/website. That would reduce the total page count by about one-third or 340 pages. Re: the price: It can't really cost over $250, can it? </end of update> Immediate competitors to this book: Barrow (ISBN 0070051119), Levine (ISBN 0072534958), Alberty (ISBN 047121504X), Atkins (ISBN 0716735393), Noggle (ISBN 0673523411) Barrow & Levine & Alberty are all about the same - nothing special. Not as clear as Laidler IMO. Avoid Atkins. He's abstruse. Same goes for his Molecular Quantum Mechanics book. His dictionary, "Quanta: A Handbook of Concepts", is much better. Get it for your Quantum chem course. Noggle is an odd book. Some parts are superficial and not detailed enough. Other parts provide very nice alternative explanations (e.g. entropy) if you're having trouble. Works best as a supplement. Other books that I've no experience with: Principles of Physical Chemistry by Lionel M. Raff and Physical Chemistry by David W. Ball ---------------------- some other books must be mentioned: 1. "Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach" by Donald A. McQuarrie & John D. Simon (ISBN: 0935702997). This book is unlike any of the others. It covers p-chem from a microscopic viewpoint - quantum mechanics first (extensively), followed by bonding, symmetry, molecular spec., stat thermo, gases, thermodynamics, equilibria, kinetics. He derives all of p-chem from first principles. For traditionalists note the authors de-emphasize phase diagrams (no big loss - few people will ever see it again) and drop electrochemistry (a real shame). Be sure to check out McQuarrie's other books on Quantum Chemistry and Statistical Mechanics. He's an excellent chemistry author. 2. Other books that follow this microscopic approach are "Principles of Physical Chemistry: Understanding Atoms, Molecules and Supramolecular Machines" by Hans Kuhn, Horst-Dieter Försterling (ISBN 0471965413) and "Physical Chemistry" by R. Stephen Berry et al. 3. "Physical Chemistry" by Walter J. Moore. Unfortunately, long out of print. Find a used 4th (North America) or 5th (international) edition - published in 1972. This is a macroscopic text. It's a bit more difficult than other books of this sort. But, he says exactly what any subject requires and no more. Beautiful economy of words. Keep it for reference. 4. "Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances" by G.N. Lewis and Merle Randall first published in 1923. Lewis was one of the best physical chemists ever. Book was THE text for a generation of chemists. A 2nd edition came out in 1961. Some of the language is dated but it's still serviceable after all these years. 5. "Physical Chemistry" by Gilbert William Castellan. love this one - not too easy, not too difficult. just right. It's OOP. find used. Check out my other reviews for other chem books.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Rather patchy and discordant,
By
This review is from: Physical Chemistry (Hardcover)
This is about 4th edition by Laidler, Meiser and Sanctuary (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003). The treatise is rather patchy and discordant. The presentation of thermodynamics and chemical equilibrium is primitive and superficial, but that of chemical kinetics is excellent, except for the places where it is intersecting with thermodynamics. In fact, this is the best textbook for learning kinetics on the undergraduate level. Some other topics are fairly advanced in mathematics, and may be hard for undergraduates. Again this is in contrast with the level of thermodynamics.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Avoid Getting The 4th Edition of This Book,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Physical Chemistry (Hardcover)
This book is good as far as the material, but the problem sets are full of, well, problems. First of all, the answers in the back of the book for the 4th edition use the tables in the back of the book from the 3rd edition. Thus, if an answer involves looking at the data in the appendixes, the answer in the back of the book is almost guaranteed to be slightly off. You do not know than if you are slightly off for a legitimate reason such as forgetting the affect of the change in moles to enthalpy in a constant volume situation or if it just due to the use of the older appendixes. Page 1035 says on the top "Note: In comparing your answers with the values listed, in some cases a difference in the last place may occur if rounding was used in the various steps of the problem. Slight differences in updated thermodynamic data may cause minor changes in a few cases." This is a horrible case of cutting corners. Second of all, many of the problems themselves are based on the appendixes in the older edition. Take for example problem 3.55., which requires that thermodynamic values for nitrite be known, even though they are not given in the 4th edition appendix. This problem turned out to have a significant difference in values between the older and newer appendixes as well. Here is an email I wrote on the issue: "After I tried switching my values from the book to the photocopy of the older edition, I was able to get the exact same answer as the back of the book for all of them. Before, I was combining the nitrite values from the photocopy with the nitrate values from the book. It turns out, though, that while this only makes a slight difference in the enthalpy answer (nitrate is 206.8 kJ/mol in the new versus -205.0 kJ/mol in the old), it makes a huge difference for the entropy. After checking, I found that the absolute entropy difference for the nitrate values (in the newer edition it is given while in the older one it is implied; I used the oxygen and nitrogen entropies from the new book to calculate it) between the difference editions was 45% if you consider the new book to be the true value. I got a value of 80.6749 J/(mol*K) in the older one compared to 146.70 J/(mol*K) in the newer one. This would explain why using the new book, most of the answers are slightly off when compared to the answers in the back of the book. They are using the old values instead of the new ones!" Third of all, some problems make errors that students would make like forgetting that the number of moles has changed after a reaction for a Kp problem (even though the lapse only lasted for one part of the problem). Fourth of all, some problems are just downright missing important data like problem 2.70, which does not give the values for a and b, which are necessary to complete the problem. It turns out that the implied values from the answer in the back of the book are for nitrogen, but the fact that the gas is nitrogen is never mentioned in the problem (guess you just have to be psychic). Good thing I didn't pay full price for this book, because $270 for this book is a rip off
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