Customer Reviews

The Physical Basis of Chemistry, Second Edition (Complementary Science)

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I took Warren S. Warren's freshman chemistry course at Duke with this evil book. It is basically a list of equations. You will not be able to figure out the problems, and since there is no solutions manual or anything comparable, you will not find out how to do them, either, unless you are a brilliant, brilliant person, in which case you should definitely buy this book. Otherwise, stay away.

This book is a summary of his lectures, and let me tell you, he is a terrible lecturer, so if you need this book for class, look forward to not knowing WTF is going on.

Oh dear.... "The Physical Basis of Chemistry" is a good book for a VERY select few, those of you who are geniuses or have already taken physical chemistry. I am in an Honors FRESHMAN Chemistry class right now, and our professor required this book.

Let's just say, even after 3 years of chemistry, I understood five things in the whole book. It is written somewhat poorly. For example, he keeps on introducing more and more equations without telling what the variables mean. I had to look back three chapters to figure out what "R" represented in a certain equation. It was not fun!

This book also requires advanced levels of calculus, which many (including me) in my class have not even taken yet. He discusses taking the double integral and vector multiplication (or something like that). It is not practical unless you have taken differential equations. Also, the practice problems are as difficult as heck! So unless you are a genius looking for a challenge, I would not recommend this book.

If you are a professor/teacher, make sure that your students have the level of knowledge necessary to understand this text. Otherwise, they will be completely lost.

Took a long time to get to me at school, but that seemed to be a general amazon trend. I saw the book and it was in pretty bad shape, although to be honest, I cannot remember if it sad good or like new. However, I still think good was a stretch...