Customer Reviews

Physical Chemistry

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

 

 

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

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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.

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.

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

I am looking at p-chem books for a class I will be teaching in the fall. The college currently uses this text, so I wanted to stick with it. I liked the resource CD which I think is interactive and visually appealing. I liked the use of color in the text and the overall traditional order in which the chapters are laid out. So at first glance, I wanted to like this book.

I want to organize my lectures around key concepts, so I'm turned off by how hard it is to find the main idea in any given chapter of this textbook. There can be ten loosely connected ideas in a single subsection, with the main idea buried somewhere in the middle. I understand the need to draw connections in science, but I think that can be done more effectively with footnotes or with separate math chapters.

For anyone taking a class with this textbook, please make sure you pay attention to what the professor talks about in lecture, then do all of the assigned problems and try to figure out why those particular problems were assigned. I apologize for getting preachy, but that should help to clarify the main ideas. This book can be most helpful for students who are able to focus on what really matters and filter out the rest.

I should mention that I lean toward more mathematically oriented texts like Silbey and Alberty's or possibly McQuarrie's Quantum Chemistry with a different book for thermodynamics and kinetics (because I want to teach thermo before quantum, and McQuarrie and Simon is not written that way). These may be pretty difficult for an undergrad-level course, but at least they make sense all the way through.

The biggest problem with this textbook is the problems. Each chapter has sub-headers. There should be sub-headers in the problem sets that match the sub-headers within the chapter. In fact, there are not. The sub-headers of the problem sets are fewer than the sub-headers of the chapters, and the names of the sub-headers usually do not match. Further, the problems should progress as the chapter progresses. In other words, the first problems should match the material presented at the start of the chapter. As the chapter progresses, so should the problems. Again, this is not the case. The first problem could be from the last page of the chapter, or anywhere else in the chapter. So, if you're having difficulty with a problem, it becomes impossible to target the part of the text that covers the concept of the problem.

The text has few worked problems. The authors present a few concepts along with some formulas, then provide a worked problem. How do you know if you discerned the concept? Working problems at the end of the chapter should do it. But, you can't really target problems because the problems don't match the chapter. If you do identify the correct problems to match the concept you're trying to understand, the next step is actually solving the problem. If you can't solve it, there aren't sufficient worked examples to help you through it. Your solution is to go to other textbooks.

Given the random method the problems were placed at the end of the chapters, there is no progression. The problems do not generally go from easy to hard, working you up to more difficult concepts. It becomes demoralizing when the first problem assigned by a professor is so difficult you cannot work it. However, the next few problems may be blazingly simple. So, the authors did not take motivating the student into account when generating the problem sets.

This textbook is challenged in its presentation of quantum chemistry. Quantum chemistry is often a separate textbook. This book covers it all in one, giant 81 page chapter. Try to match the problems at the end of that chapter to pages in the text!

There are a few wrong answers within the problem sets. While this is normally to be expected, the organization of the problems is already problematic, making it difficult for students to be sure the authors are in error. Diligent students will be further frustrated trying to get the author's answers. Given the cost of this book, accuracy should be demanded.

The authors present physical chemistry in the historical manner it was discovered. While this is a traditional approach, it is not necessarily the most conducive to student's understanding of the material.

There is a CD ROM that accompany's the text. It would be good for presentation of concepts at the middle school level. When you are struggling to work problems, you often refer to the text to ensure you understand the concept. When that fails, you might try looking at the CD ROM. Neither my fellow students nor I ever found the CD ROM to be of any help. It is grossly simplistic.

If you're a student forced to use this text because your school requires it, I advise you to get other textbooks and solutions manuals to learn the material. That will be costly, but your grade will likely suffer if you rely solely on this text. This textbook is far from a complete source to learning physical chemistry at the undergraduate level. If you're a professor looking for a physical chemistry textbook, please do your students a favor and do not choose this text.

This book is decent for a very low-level p-chem course aimed at chemistry minors or those simply interested in the topic. However, for a chemistry or chem. eng. undergraduate major, the book does not provide enough detail to develop a true understanding of the material. Students intending to apply to graduate school in chemistry should consider buying a stronger text, such as Atkins.

This book contains some of the most enlightening expositions of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics at the elementary (college) level that would help many layman science buffs understand some of the basic math; moreso than any other book I have seen! This book was designed to educate and not obfuscate or pontificate. All in all an outstanding effort! How about writing a quantum mechanics book at the same level and clarity?
[The reviewer who complains that it's to light provides a good warning to majors but all books are either too light or too heavy depending on the reader's expectations.]

The textbook can be very complicated at times and the problems will be even harder without the solutions. There is a bunch of complicated equations with many variables. This solution manual helps greatly with understanding the problems.

From my personal use of this text, it covers most topics adaquately, and unlike some texts, there are many equations available throughout the book, as well as how how the equations were derived. The most notable point, is the summary of equations at the end of each chapter, for ease of use. This is the only text I have used that summarizes the equations, in any portion of the book. This is a helpful book, for Freshman Chemsitry through Graduate school, both as a classroom text, and as a reference.

I ordered this book for my son. He said it was in perfect condition and arrived very quickly. Thank you!!