Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline of College Chemistry, Ninth Edition (Schaum's Outlines)

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

 

 

Schaum's Outline of College Chemistry is intended to supplement a college-level general chemistry course book. While it is not intended to completely replace a standard textbook, it does cover about 90% of the topics in the more expensive, weighty texts. There are 21 topically arranged chapters in which the authors limit themselves to 4-5 sub topics per chapter. This is especially useful for students who wish to correlate Schaum's chapters with those in their course textbook.

More or less, the progression of topics follows that of most standard, general chemistry textbooks. This book was first published in 1980 and has since been revised about 9 times. Most of the dated language has been brought up to date to match current standards, however, the layout (font and font size) is rather drab and unappealing. Students accustomed to bright, colorful textbooks will probably find this book hard (or perhaps impossible) to adjust to.

For those who can see past the dull surface of this book, you'll find a treasure trove of helpful, succinct explanations and many hundreds of challenging and relevant practice problems. Successful chemistry students know that "studying" means solving problems. If you spend any more than 20% of your study time reading pages and pages of textual explanations, you aren't studying effectively. Schaum's Chemistry contains excellent textual explanations but its true strength lies in the outstanding quality of practice problems (and corresponding worked solutions.) In each chapter, roughly 20-25 problems with detailed solutions are provided. Then, an additional 30-40 practice problems are provided with non-detailed solutions. I would suggest that students work through these practice problems continually throughout their course and in the weeks leading up to major exams. Some problems are extremely basic and others are quite challenging.

In terms of utility, I would say that this book would be especially useful for Chemistry majors and those who plan to continue taking advanced chemistry courses. While highly advanced topics (quantum mechanics with partial differentials, molecular orbital diagrams with symmetry and group theory, etc...) are understandably neglected, the overall "gist" of general chemistry topics with algebraic formulas are covered quite nicely. I would consider this a useful reference for undergraduate quantitative chemistry courses, physical chemistry or analytical courses. It would also be a useful refresher for students preparing for the GRE Chemistry Subject Test.

For students who are in high school level chemistry (and perhaps AP Chemistry) I would suggest the Schaum's Outline of Beginning Chemistry, Third Edition (Schaum's Outline Series) title which contains lengthier explanations and problems geared for more introductory courses.

For students who are looking for a useful reference for the MCAT, I would suggest a different text entirely since the MCAT is a multiple-choice based examination. The practice problems in this book will greatly enhance your understanding of general chemistry topics, but will not make you a better MCAT test-taker. For the MCAT, I suggest Examkrackers MCAT Chemistry which contains multiple choice and passage-based practice problems.

Overall: "A" rating for quality of content at an excellent price.
Please feel free to post comments or questions!

I thought this book was awesome at first, as I am a physics major and already familiar with most (but not all) of this stuff already - UNTIL it wasted my time with trying to decipher the authors' careless errors! On page 80, Example 3 leaves out an equals sign and makes the equation look like a product.
There are typos and quantitative errors riddling this mess. I plan to write a letter to the authors.

How did they get away with this? Yikes! Nevertheless, it's helping me pretty well to get ready over the summer for my first college chemistry course.
A possible alternative: this book looks affordable and the reviewer claims (I'm not sure) it is the same as the textbook for which it is a study guide - except with solutions, of course:Foundations of College Chemistry, Study Guide

I purchased the Kindle version. The only reason I purchased the book is to get sample questions to cover my Chem studies. Of the twenty or so problems I have tried to solve, a significant portion have had errors. Needless to say I spent HOURS trying to get to the answers mentioned in the book only to have multiple sources inform me that they too don't get to the suggested answers!

I am using this book to review Chem I so I can go straight into Chem II. With the exception of ERRORS I love everything about it. Each chapter starts with short explanations of the most important topics followed by wonderfully explained solved problems and loads of supplementary problems. If you actually do all of the problems you'll have a solid understanding of everything you need to know going into chem II.

HOWEVER, I have run into some errors which are becoming quite frustrating. I have wasted a lot of time pondering a problem that simply had the wrong conversions. One example is problem 5.1 on page 66. As topics get more complex I am wary of spending too much time on a problem when the book could be wrong rather than my own result. Also troubling was my copy lacks the periodic table, which according to the table of contents should be inside the front cover - nope! Disappointing from a reputable name and NINE editions.

So far though my understanding from this book has outweighed the frustration which is why I gave it 3 stars. I have read through chapter 5 so far.

As other reviewers have mentioned, you do need some background in chemistry and math to get a lot out of this book, although I have not taken chemistry for several years and am getting by alright. It does not elaborate on complex math as this would make problems unnecessarily cumbersome IMO, but it is easy enough to look elsewhere to review conversions and algebraic fractions. It should be noted this book is designed for students currently enrolled in a chem course (which I am not and it works for me). To reiterate another review, this book is detailed enough for a college level course and might be frustrating for someone wanting chem basics.

I bought this book to help me with a college Chemistry class I'm currently taking. I decided to buy this book because it stated, "1,340 fully solved problems." I was disappointed to find out that most of the problems in the book only had the answers and do not include the steps in getting to those answers. If I wanted to purchase a reference book mostly filled with just the answers, I could've just gone to the Tutoring Center at my school. Given my current schedule, I don't think I have the time to spend hours trying to figure out how to arrive at the answers the book had.

Great book to have, although you have to know some of the material just to use this book, it's not a last minute study guide to use

The Schaum's books are always worthwhile. They a form to put things clear to the reader

Excellente resource. I got this for my daughter in college and its been extremly helpful. Planning to buy the next ones in the series.

The book is not comprehensive. I'm very disappointed. I felt I had wasted my money to buy this book.

I forgot to purchase this book, so I had to overnight it ... it came in good condition and I got it just in time!!