As the first modern physical chemistry textbook to cover quantum mechanics before thermodynamics and kinetics, this book provides a contemporary approach to the study of physical chemistry. By beginning with quantum chemistry, students will learn the fundamental principles upon which all modern physical chemistry is built. The text includes a special set of "MathChapters" to review and summarize the mathematical tools required to master the material Thermodynamics is simultaneously taught from a bulk and microscopic viewpoint that enables the student to understand how bulk properties of materials are related to the properties of individual constituent molecules. This new text includes a variety of modern research topics in physical chemistry as well as hundreds of worked problems and examples.
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Editorial Reviews
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Pedagogically pleasing, as it builds up physical chemistry from considerations of atoms to systems containing numerous molecules. --Choice
It is a superb book, to be greatly appreciated and treasured by generations of students to come. --Richard Zare, Stanford University
An excellent modern physical chemistry course that should inspire us to rethink our curriculum. --Journal of Chemical Education
It is a superb book, to be greatly appreciated and treasured by generations of students to come. --Richard Zare, Stanford University
An excellent modern physical chemistry course that should inspire us to rethink our curriculum. --Journal of Chemical Education
About the Author
As the author of landmark chemistry books and textbooks, Donald McQuarrie's name is synonymous with excellence in chemical education. From his classic text on Statistical Mechanics to his recent quantum-first tour de force on Physical Chemistry, McQuarrie's best selling textbooks are highly acclaimed by the chemistry community. McQuarrie received his PhD from the University of Oregon, and is Professor Emeritus from the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis. He makes his home at The Sea Ranch in California with his wife Carole, where he continues to write.Â
John D. Simon became the first George B. Geller Professor of Chemistry at Duke University in 1998. He is currently Chair Chemistry Department at Duke and a faculty member of the Biochemistry, and Ophthalmology Departments of the Duke Medical Center. John graduated from Williams College in 1979 with a B.A. in Chemistry and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1983. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Mostafa El-Sayed at UCLA, John joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at UCSD in 1985.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
68 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE Textbook of Physical Chemistry,
By
This review is from: Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach (Hardcover)
I had the good fortune of having Donald McQuarrie as a Professor for 5 Physical Chemistry courses while I was an undergrad at Indiana University (2 undergrad semsters and 3 graduate semesters). (He is now at UC Davis). His clarity and skills of being a classroom teacher was awesome. In the intervening years, I had forgotten a lot of what I had known in PChem - in spite of having gotten a PhD in the subject from Cal Berkeley. (Industry does that to one). Now that my interests coincide with relearning the subject, I was turned off by the textbooks that I had. In searching for a text, I noticed McQuarrie had written one. I decided that it was definately worth checking out. Upon reading it - it became obvious that all those years of teaching the subject had paid off. The clarity in approaching the subject was set to print! What is great about his text is: 1) Totally self contained. The math needed for a particular subject is put into interleafing chapters on a "just in time basis." I can see how that might be a turnoff for someone whose math skills are sharp, advanced and current. On the otherhand, for folks that need a refresher (like myself) or had limited exposure to the subject - It is right there, right now, no hunting around needed. 2) Comprehensive. YOU DO NOT NEED ANOTHER TEXT. If you have the misfortune of having a class where the Professor has chosen another text this would be THE supplemenatry text (though at [price] new there would be an 'ouch' factor). 3) BREAKS PARADIGMS. If you look at almost any other text on Physical Chemistry (Barrow or Atkins or .....), the Table of Contents is identical - the subject is taught in the order the historical discoveries where made. It is like in every generation the leading Physical Chemists took the old texts and APPENDED the latest and greatest to it. Guess What! That is not neccessary the Best way to LEARN (or in my case relearn) the subject. It is not neccesarily the method best suited for focusing on what is most applicable and utilized currently. McQuarrie's approach was a top/down rethinking of how to teach the subject. The focus as the subject indicates "A molecular Approach". While there is historical value in seeing how the pioneers took prinicples of thermodynamics -discovered when physicists scoffed at the very notion of molecules and then were able to show (a la Boltzman) that if one starts with molecules - one can derive thermodynamics from it. It is actually much more streamlined to learn it the opposite - focus on the notion of molecules first and foremost. This is the text of PChem for the 21st century. As an aside, McQuarrie pays homage to the pioneers by having a Scientist highlighted per chapter. All in all a great text from a great teacher!
38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Only P-Chem Textbook You'll Need,
By
This review is from: Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach (Hardcover)
One of the most emerging fear of P-Chem students is the rigid dificulty and obscureness of the mathematical background. Many textbooks have unfortunately overseen the importance of treating the mathematics and establishing link between the mathematics and the physical interpretation of chemical phenomenon. McQuarrie's text addresses and amends this problem in a brilliant. Difficult mathematical concepts are integrated along with the appropriate topics and are presented in a concise fashion. The first half of the text discusses topics in quantum chemistry while the rest deals with thermodynamics, statistical mechanics,and kinetics. All the equations are backed by clear explanation and mathematical derivation. When I took quantum chemistry (the first course of the P-Chem sequence), we used McQuarrie and it worked just fine in explaining all the topics covered in lecture.s (such as spectroscopy, perturbation theory, etc). Unfortunately professor from the second semester (thermodynamics) decided to abandon McQuarrie and used instead Atkins' Physical Chemistry, which is absolutely not worth the money and very confusing and difficult to follow. I kept the McQuarrie book and used that as study aids and reference, whereas I trashed Atkins as soon as the semester was over (well, I immediately sold it back). McQuarrie is the only P-Chem book you'll find useful and clear.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best and most complete textbook for a very important subject,
By
This review is from: Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach (Hardcover)
[NOTE: This is a revised version of an earlier review titled, "Not undergraduate-friendly; buy the solutions manual." My opinion of this text has changed considerably over the years since I was first exposed to it (and to physical chemistry itself), and I feel I was not fair with my first, rather critical, review. At the time, I gave the text 3 stars, something I frankly thought was being charitable.]
I first studied physical chemistry in college nearly four years ago, and at the time, I must confess that I absolutely hated this book. I think my primary source of frustration was really with my foreign professor, who had very poor English skills--and, I suspect, poor teaching skills, in any language. Having been spoiled the year before by a truly outstanding organic chemistry professor and an equally outstanding textbook (Wade's, which I highly recommend for undergraduates), I was not accustomed to using a textbook as my primary source of information. Physical chemistry, then, was something of a rude awakening for me. I certainly didn't appreciate the change in professors, but probably more so, I totally missed the fundamental importance of physical chemistry to the broader discipline. My impression of the subject, at first brush, was of a useless exercise in complexity, something condescending PhD's conjured up to torture undergraduates with. In hindsight, this attitude kept me from appreciating the beauty of the subject, and fostered an intense loathing for this colossal, 1400-page red monstrosity. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that my previous review was little more than another tirade by a frustrated student blaming his professor and his textbook for all of his problems. At the end of the year, I sold my text back to the bookstore for whatever pittance they offered me. Some time later, I developed the truly disgusting habit of reading textbooks for fun in the summer. Astrophysics, meteorology, botany, you name it. My last year in college, I was able to fit a number of graduate courses into my schedule. One of them was a course on mechanisms, and an optional text listed in the syllabus was Anslyn and Dougherty's "Modern Physical Organic Chemistry." Having by now bought so many other textbooks on a whim, I bought this text and began to read it in my free time. As I mention in my review of that text, I was so utterly hooked after the first chapter that it quickly became (and remains) one of my favorite texts on my entire bookshelf. The authors' modern perspective and lucid writing were so refreshing, so diametrically opposed to my previous experiences in physical chemistry that I could not help but re-evaluate my opinion of Simon and McQuarrie's text. After I graduated, I got around to buying another copy, and this summer, I re-read the better part of it. I cannot tell you how much my opinion of physical chemistry, and this text in particular, have changed ever since. Quantum mechanics is a difficult subject, to be sure, but I think much of the rigmarole about it has less to do with the inherent difficulty of the subject and more to do with the difficulty of re-calibrating your "chemical intuition" around a quantum framework. I have often debated whether teaching what might be termed "non-quantum" chemistry to high school and first-year college students--only to turn everything upside down when these students finally do take a physical chemistry course--really is the right approach. After all, more than any other field under the "chemistry" umbrella, it is physical chemistry that has answered the most of my questions: Why are there four quantum numbers, or any, for that matter? Why do we ignore the 4s orbital when we count 3d electrons in transition metal complexes? Why on Earth do two hydrogen atoms want to come together to form a chemical bond at all? Questions like these would never have arisen in my head if I had simply approached chemistry from a physical perspective, right from the start. To that end, McQuarrie and Simon really did an outstanding job with "Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach." My advice to first-timers is to be patient. There is a remarkable amount of mathematics (and pages--217 of them) you must get through before the Schrödinger equation can be solved even for the hydrogen atom, the simplest chemical system. But if you have been diligent and patient with the material leading up to it, I promise you will be floored by the beauty of the answers, of the way so much falls out of so simple a premise. In particular, the chapters on spectroscopy that follow are among the most satisfying to read, in any text, on any subject. Now that I have read this and other physical chemistry texts multiple times through, I can say with confidence that McQuarrie and Simon's is, by far, the best and most thorough treatment of quantum mechanics for undergraduates. If you have difficulty with this text, I assure you, you'll have more with other texts. As another reviewer has noted, literally everything you need to understand physical chemistry is in this textbook--all the mathematics, a historical background, a treatment of classical wave mechanics, and so forth. Of course, for any particular discussion, there is no reason to believe that McQuarrie and Simon's is the best or the easiest to understand. No textbook is perfect. But for one catch-all physical chemistry textbook, this is by far the best one out there. I still stand by one caveat from my first review, namely, that the problems at the end of the chapters are unnecessarily difficult, and frankly, not particularly useful or rewarding. If this text is required by your professor and the problems are assigned as homework, do yourself a huge favor and purchase the solutions manual. You will not be successful without it. I also do not believe that the statistical mechanics approach taken by McQuarrie and Simon in the second half of this text is the best way to introduce thermodynamics to students. By no means is their treatment impenetrable, and of course it is the more fundamental approach, but at least in my view, the subject is simply better appreciated without reference to molecules at all. Any of a number of outstanding thermo texts exist for this very purpose.
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First Sentence:
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many scientists believed that all the fundamental discoveries of science had been made and little remained but to clear up a few minor problems and to improve experimental methods to measure physical results to a greater number of decimal places. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
hydrogen atomic wave functions, optimized trial function, electronic potential energy curves, molecular term symbols, spectral radiant energy density, hydrogen atomic spectrum, law standard state, relative translational energy, gas whose equation, normalized trial function, equivalent hydrogen nuclei, diatomic ideal gas, symmetric about the internuclear axis, atomic term symbols, observed rate law, possible vibrational states, hydrogen atomic orbitals, primitive cubic unit cell, equivalent hydrogen atoms, benzene boils, determinantal wave function, aqueous sucrose solution, determined rate law, oblate symmetric top, standard molar entropies Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Nobel Prize, Pauli Exclusion Principle, Third Law of Thermodynamics, Liquid-Liquid Solutions, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Solid-Liquid Solutions, The Exploitation of Symmetry, Bonding In Polyatomic Molecules, Phase Equilibria, University of California, The Dawn of the Quantum Theory, Cambridge University, University of Chicago, Use the Redlich-Kwong, World War, Harvard University, Peter Debye, Two Spectroscopic Models, United States, Verify Equations, X-Ray Diffraction Measurements, Apply Euler, Continuous Continuous, Determine the Miller, Isotherms Are Plots of Surface Coverage New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many scientists believed that all the fundamental discoveries of science had been made and little remained but to clear up a few minor problems and to improve experimental methods to measure physical results to a greater number of decimal places. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
hydrogen atomic wave functions, optimized trial function, electronic potential energy curves, molecular term symbols, spectral radiant energy density, hydrogen atomic spectrum, law standard state, relative translational energy, gas whose equation, normalized trial function, equivalent hydrogen nuclei, diatomic ideal gas, symmetric about the internuclear axis, atomic term symbols, observed rate law, possible vibrational states, hydrogen atomic orbitals, primitive cubic unit cell, equivalent hydrogen atoms, benzene boils, determinantal wave function, aqueous sucrose solution, determined rate law, oblate symmetric top, standard molar entropies Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Nobel Prize, Pauli Exclusion Principle, Third Law of Thermodynamics, Liquid-Liquid Solutions, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Solid-Liquid Solutions, The Exploitation of Symmetry, Bonding In Polyatomic Molecules, Phase Equilibria, University of California, The Dawn of the Quantum Theory, Cambridge University, University of Chicago, Use the Redlich-Kwong, World War, Harvard University, Peter Debye, Two Spectroscopic Models, United States, Verify Equations, X-Ray Diffraction Measurements, Apply Euler, Continuous Continuous, Determine the Miller, Isotherms Are Plots of Surface Coverage New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
6
books
cite this book:
See all 6 books citing this book
- Chemistry of the Environment, Second Edition by Ronald A. Bailey in Back Matter
- Principles of Quantum Mechanics: As Applied to Chemistry and Chemical Physics by Donald D. Fitts in Back Matter
- Molecular Machines (Topics in Current Chemistry) by T. Ross Kelly in Back Matter
- Spectroscopy for the Biological Sciences by Gordon G. Hammes on page 14
- Quantum Mechanics for Chemists (Tutorial Chemistry Texts, 14) by David O Hayward on page 177
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