Customer Reviews

Reaction Kinetics (Oxford Science Publications)

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As a chemist, but not a physical chemist, I am often in need of not only a refresher in many topics within chemistry but also a more in-depth treatment of a topic. It is often difficult finding information about topics outisde of your major area of interest that are on an appropriate level to allow you to learn quickly without being overwhelmed, yet learn at a sufficient level of depth as to use your new-found knowledge effectively. I have encountered several books that I have found particularly useful in this regard. Pilling and Seakins is one of them.

The authors do a great job of mixing the theoretical treatment with actual data and data analysis (a boon to those of us who use kinetics as a tool, but do not focus on its theory in our research!). I have used this book in my own research as well as in a supplement to teaching a graduate class in Physical Organic Chemistry. The description of collision and transition state theory was particularly helpful in this latter regard. Further advantages of this book is that it is quite well written and makes use of excellent figures and diagrams.

If you own one book on chemical kinetics, this is the one for you.

If you, like me, are an undergraduate doing quite a bit of physical chemistry, this is an excellent book to have around. It treats a number of different topics in a fairly good deal of depth and quite clearly. As long as you already have a feel for basic kinetics (how to derive a rate equation, using the steady-state assumption, etc.), then you'll easily dive into this book. If you're not particularly comfortable with that kind of material, it's probably advisable to look elsewhere first (Atkins if you're feeling brave) before using this book, as it doesn't give those topics a thorough treatment but rather quickly proceeds to talking about techniques for studying fast reactions etc. This is a very good book and singularly is the reason I did well on my recent kinetics exam.

Essentially the "Cliff Notes" of chemical kinetics. As a grad. student I much prefer Steinfeld's Chemical Kinetics & Dynamics.