Customer Reviews

Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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!

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.

[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.

If you are looking at the used version of this text DO NOT get the "2004 As New. LATEST 2004 EDITION SOFTCOVER STUDENT TEXTBOOK - BRAND NEW - AIRMAIL SHIPPING FOR INTERNATIONAL ORDERS -BUY FROM PROVEN SELLER !" book. This is a flimsy foreign printing of the book, very low quality. Stay far, far away from that edition of the text!

I stumbled across this awesome tome in my university library. A professor of mine, a biophysicist, had talked to me about some problems he did as a Ph.D. student and identified them as being part of this strange subject called "physical chemistry." I was intrigued.

I've never been much of a chemistry buff. It just never took for me in highschool, and the labs at my university weren't run in a very interesting way, so my knowledge of pure chemistry is mediocre at best. But, as a physics major, I already have a working knowledge of quantum and stat mech -- and this book still managed to teach me an enormous amount of new material. (I particularly liked the derivation of the emission and absorption spectrums of diatomic molecules in chapter 5, and the molecular spectroscopy in chapter 13. Awesome stuff. I feel like I could go out, join a spectroscopy lab, and do actual calculations now, if I wanted to.) And the presentation is better than I've see for most PHYSICS books devoted to these subjects! It's treatment of quantum rivals Griffiths, a classic qm text, and the stat mech is among the clearest I've seen. Not only am I interested in chemistry now (for the first time in my life!) I want to get a copy of this book just for the physics in it! I'm extremely jealous of the reviewer who got to take classes from one of the authors -- his teaching skills come through on every page, and sitting in his lecture hall must've been quite an experience.

A new text in physical chemistry was very much needed, and the McQuarrie-Simon book is very good in general. It was wise to exclude electrochemistry; the subject is full of bad theory. The problems are good, but they tend to be too simple (the old idea in Moore's book of having a special section of hard problems might have helped). Criticisms: The paper is too flimsy. The strong connections between quantum mechanics and spectroscopy are good, but the NMR chapter is not connected in this manner and does not belong in the book. There are many, many typos. I will just note the most egregious: an incorrect statement of the phase rule under the portrait of the noble head of Gibbs. The authors deserve a second edition in order to correct this error and the many others. William Claffey,Ph.D. PPG Surface Technologies Euclid, OH 44117

The University of Pittsburgh used this text my p-chem I class, which deals with quantum physics. This book and the associated answer manual have a wealth of information, and I think this will be a great addition to my library for the years to come. I noticed, however, that the highly detail mathematical derivations of key equations often came at the expense of explanations or illustrations. I like mathematical rigor, but it helps to explain the significance of the mathematical models, and this book could do a much better job. Rather than fishing for the right information in McQuarrie, I found myself going to the Atkins text to help ease me into McQuarrie. This book has great staying power due to its great detail and scope of topics, and I'm treasuring my copy, but it has flaws as a beginning undergraduate text.

While not a book for beginers, it is easy to understand at a moderate knowledge level. This physical chemistry book encompassed a variety of topics in a thorough, yet easy to understand method while providing a sound mathematical background. It provided information on a general level (suitable for second year thermodynamics and inorganic courses), while also delving into more complex topics. The sections on thermodynamics seemed especially well covered. It is a good book, but as a Chemical-Physics student I would not recomend it to first year students without suitable quantum theory or mathematical backgrounds.

I adore this book. It explains physical chemistry in a way that makes perfect sense. I used it for my chemical engineering thermodynamics I class. While other people contented themselves with memorizing really long equations and formulas, I was able to derive them by reading McQuarrie's book. I found that my chemical engineering textbook just spat out an equation out of nowhere and told us to know it, this book starts out with the chemistry, explains the theory, and clearly shows how to get to the equation. These things don't come out of nowhere, they can be taught and derived! I haven't even taken p chem but I look forward to it after using this book for ChemE thermo.

I am a sterilization microbiologist with my education in medical microbiology. I have found it necessary over the many years I've been out of university to keep abreast and refreshed in the various contributing sciences to my field. Physical Chemistry was the Holy Terror of graduate school (and with good reason). If you weren't a whiz kid in calculas, physics, and chemistry, you had many many many long nights ahead of you. McQuarrie has taken an approach in this text that mitigates much of the terror. His approach is more of a teacher and less of a demi-god trying to impress you with how little you know and how much he knows. His approach is straight-forward and he provides ample use of review of basic principles in calculus, physics, math, etc. after each chapter. This helps in that you don't need to go hunting through old texts to find what you need to understand the concepts in the next chapter. While a massive text, it is worth every penny. This book is very well suited for anyone trying to refresh their knowledge, especially if you're studying by youself. Buy the book. You won't be disappointed.