Customer Reviews

Physical Chemistry: Principles and Applications in Biological Sciences (4th Edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Tinoco, Sauer, Wang, and now Puglisi, have written a fine text on both the foundations of thermodyanmics and physical chemistry, and the applications of these fields to biological phenomena (both natural and experimental.)

The 3rd edition of the book, in this reviewer's memory, was remarkable only in its staggering lack of focus and explanatory power. This 4th edition vastly improves on that effort.

It has to be said that thermodynamics without statistical mechanics is probably always going to be obscured by the fog of axioms, unless the reader exhibits some remarkable intuitiveness about entropy and partial derivatives. The first few chapters of the book focus on thermodynamics from this axiomatic approach, and may be the reason why so many undergraduate students find the whole thing so distasteful. But it has to be said that the authors spared some effort in trying to ameliorate the abstractness of thermo, by interjecting molecular interpretations of thermo phenomena every now and then.

Once the reader has sped past the thermodynamics, and free energy equilibria chapters, he can be expected to come upon a series of well-written chapters on kinetics. The chapters are generously illustrated with informative diagrams, and most modern and relevant topics are discussed, such as transition state theories, enzyme kinetics, allostery (although the section on allostery was slightly underwhelming. I recommend that the authors develop this section more carefully by considering the various regimes of allostery.)

A valiant attempt is made for discussing quantum mechanics and applications to physical chemistry problems. However, it would seem that quantum mechanics just can't be taught in one chapter, although it's essential in proper understanding of spectroscopy, which forms the basis for the subsequent 'applications' chapter.

The book ends with a discussion of statistical thermodynamics. If the reader begins here and reads it carefully, it is likely that he can surmount the comprehension problems in the initial thermodynamics chapters. This is only the opinion of this reviewer though.

In summary, this is a good book with a comprehensive collection of topics relevant to the modern biology researcher (be you biochemist, biophysicist, chemical biologist, or plain vanilla biologist). The undergraduate student may be bewildered by the variety of topics presented in such a succint manner. The book has easy to read type, sometimes crammed with too much text. There is an absolutely excellent selection of problems, with an accompanying solutions manual that bears only a few errors. Let it be said that there are many many worse physical chemistry books out there, and giving this book anything less than 3 stars would corrupt the usefulness of the ... ratings system.

As a graduate student in biochemistry who has never taken a physical chemistry class, but who has a good background in physics and calculus, I really like this book as a reference. Standard physical chemistry textbooks I looked at, such as Atkins, did not cover the biologically relevant topics I was interetsed in.

This book contains just the right depth for a reference in biophysical chemistry. The concepts are always presented with biological applications in mind. The topics coveredare exactly what I was looking for, including thermodynamics, kinetcs, quantum chemistry and the theory behind the main biophysical techniques,

I was originally intending to buy the 3 volume Cantor and Schimmel series, but I have found that this book gives me everything I need for a much lower price.

The text is poorly written and hard to understand. The solution manual is even worse!! The authors do not explain which equations they're using or where the numbers are coming from.

This book is packed with information!!!... now good luck trying to sort through it all. The book is not organized very well, and in deriving some of the equations, they fail to explain how they reached the next step. For the part on Thermodynamics, they brush over some parts that I thought would be important in understanding the whole picture. If you already understand Biophysical Chemistry, this book could be for you, but if it is your first time learning the material, I would try another text.

Took longer than expected to arrive. I paid extra to have the product arrive 2 days ago and Im still waiting.

Its a book I would probably never even looked at it if I didnt need it for my class,

This is an absolutely horrible textbook, derivations and applications of physical chemistry equations are poorly explained. Very few examples of how to use the equations provided. This text was required for my second year Phys Chem course, and did nothing but confuse me!

For a very difficult subject this book is without any color or interesting text.The derivations of the already complicated equations jump steps so you have to redo them all yourself to see how they got to the end. I got through to nearly the end of the first chapeter but then gave up for now as I was falling asleep too often.I get the impression that the authors were approached by the publisher to write this textbook and that it was not written with any passion to show the excitement of scientific discovery.There is no background or history mentioned which would have made the whole thing more human.

simply this book is terrible.

despite the impression the publisher wanna impose on the readers by citing the authors' notable teaching positions, it immediately loses whole credibility it tries to establish as a decent book by failing too soon in every respect, begining from the chapter 2.

i have read two other p.chem books and personally do not like the babish differential appoaches all of them give out invariably and rather forcing the concept that differential operators are "infinitesimal quantities." I understand that authors chose this crude and uber-ancient interpretation(along with other mathematical nonsenses) to reach the widest audience possible but this sort attempt makes the book fraught with confusing junks. And this particular book does not fail to follow this safe yet confusing approach. However, unlike other p.chem texts(at least for the atkin's and levine's) it abuses the mathematical notations and forces equations by ignoring constraints to come up with formulas. For example, to derive the partials of the extensive functions(chapter 4) it just intergrate all the different partials(dual base coeffients and its corresponding dual base) and somehow comes up with definite integrals. Anyone who took decent calculus class would know that the inverse map of the differential map is not that simple unless the variables are not related to each other. Other texts at least offer the constraints, although not explicitly(this subsequently makes the unwary readers oblivious about the specific conditions in which the pertaining equation is applicable).

anyhoo, the book is way too superflous with mathematical nonsenses and tries really hard to get rid of diffcult concepts by presenting concepts as "definitions." More frusrating than this is the fact that it completely lacks the proper motivation building-up before presenting particular concepts or formulas. Perhaps the authors of this book are truly convinced that all the future-biochemist/MD wanna-bes are faithful believers of the ubiquitous yet unspoken notion that all of our current scientific knowledges are nothing more than mere remnants of forcefully fed informations on a few chosen human beings many years ago despite their vehement refusals.

Just buy another p-chem book and use a good biochem text(such as voet's) instead of using this book. Making connection between the physical chemistry and biological science is not that difficult. If you can't you always got internet.

This book is not intended for first time learner or a person who wants to study in depth about P-Chem or Bio-P-Chem.
If it were not due to uc berkeley's requirement, I would NEVER buy this.
The text is lacking of derivations. Easy problems are made to be too complicated. I had to refer to my physics book in order to do the problems.
I would not recommend anyone to buy this.