No comments about Zumdahl Chemical Principles Sixth Edition.

1 comments about Organic Chemistry: A Short Course.

1. I'm not a big fan of chemistry or anything, but this was actually a pretty useful book. It is easy to read, has lots of examples, and systematically goes through each type of organic molecule you might encounter and tells you how to recognize one, name it, what it's chemical properties are, some info about where they are found and how they're used, and how they are made, broken down, and how they react with other compounds.
   
   One thing that is lacking is how a lot of the chemistry actually works sometimes. They might just show the reactants and the products and expect you to memorize it, rather than learning the process behind it. But, I guess that's part of the limitations of it being a 'short course'.....

5 comments about Fundamentals of Biochemistry: Life at the Molecular Level.

1. This was the biochemistry book for my undergraduate course, but I hardly used it because it is not written in clearly understood language. It does have a glossary which is useful for looking up definitions, but when I would go to the index to clarify something we learned in class, chances were none of the references would apply to the concepts I was looking for, and if it did, it was incomprehensible. The general consensus among my classmates was that the book was worthless. The only useful feature is the end of chapter problems, and the solutions to these are found at the end of the book. I understand Lippincotts biochem is supposed to be pretty good, so you may want to investigate that if you are looking for a biochemistry book.



2. When I first used this book in undergrad I did not like it very much, however, in medical school, I found this book to be a huge asset. It is great for someone who learns visually and condenses all the info on to a few pages, my medical school bio chem book took 30 pages to explain what this book does in a few. Also, I like the way this book is organized, it seems to flow.... the only chapter that seemed to need a little work was nucliotide mab.. Undergrad texts seem to stress more chemistry and enzyme mechanics, while med school will stress inh points. Also, photosythesis is not covered in med school, vitamins are not covered in this text



3. The book i received was in excellent condition, it was listed under the used section, but when i received it, it was still in the original packing. The only problem was the CD was missing somehow, no big deal.



4. Overview:
   
   I am reading this book in preparation for Biochemistry I and find it to be full of gross errors. Simple definitions like that of osmosis are incorrect. Table 4-1 is terrible, and there are other tables and figures (Figure 3-6 for example) that require much more attention than they have been given. I am seriously concerned and disappointed about the authors, editors, and long list of professionals that reviewed this book because of missing basic "fundamental" pieces of information.
   
   Professors:
   
   If you are a professor who is thinking of using this text in class, I would suggest you DO NOT! Your students could be a hazard in the end if they plan to got to medical school or into pharmacology.
   
   Students:
   
   If you are a student currently using this text for class, please find other resources. I am catching only the errors that I know to be false, but there could be many more.
   
   DO NOT USE THIS BOOK!!!
   
   Further Comments:
   
   My professor will be using the third edition of this book in class, and I can only hope that in the third edition Voet got it right.



5. The title of the book is a very succinct description of the content. This is a solid text with alot of good, basic information. As a course text, I think the success with which this book may be employed depends a great deal upon the employer. If all you require of your students is that they skim the chapters and hear your lectures, the book will seem simple and lacking in detail to the student. If you require your students to memorize the diagrams, tables, reaction mechanisms, molecular structures, pathways, etc... (as my biochem professors did), then the book will seem very difficult, convoluted, and complicated. Unfortunately, when you get to a course like biochem with so much information for the students to absorb, and for which every text looks like an encyclopedia, I'm afraid a person's opinion of a textbook actually depends more upon the instructor who presented them with the text, rather than on the text itself. So I suspect many of the reviews on this page are actually reviews of professors who taught the reviewers and not of the book. Just something to keep in mind.
   
   That said, I enjoyed learning from this text and I did well in the course (a notoriously difficult course at my school).

5 comments about Introduction to Organic Laboratory Techniques: A Microscale Approach (Brooks/Cole Laboratory Series for Organic Chemistry).

1. Though a complete laboratory text with 50+ experiments, lab techniques, tables of unknowns and spectroscopy, the organic faculty prepare our own lab manual to be followed. Pavia text becomes a close handy reference for lab techniques and setup. The techniques section, which include filtration, crystallization, distillation (simple, fractional, and steam), chromatogrpahy (column, thin-layer, and gas)... should be carefully studied before conducting experiments for beginning students. Unless your organic lab course follows almost exactly the outline of experiments in this text, you can check it out from the library and read it.



2. Pavia et al's Organic Laboratory Techniques (2nd Ed) is an astonishingly excellent book for the beginning student.

   In great (yet delightful) detail it describes a series of 60 varied experiments designed to acquaint the reader with a plethora of laboratory techniques, from Measuring Volumes and Weights up thru Chromatography and Spectroscopy.

   Particularly good are the many exceptionally clear drawings of laboratory apparatus, and rational behind the instrumentation. (Eg, do you know why you should put a trap in the aspirator hose, or for that matter how the aspirator (vacuum) works?) Sprinkled throughout are hints on how best to perform this, that or the other thing.

   A thorough reading of this gem will make you right at home in the organic chemistry laboratory, and indeed will practically make you an organic chemist in spite of yourself.

   In fact, if you are thinking of going to college, you might ask whether this text is used in the college's Organic Chemistry Lab course. If not, and you are interested in science, find a school that uses it! And if you are already in a lab course with another text, you would be well advised to get this eminently readable treasure also.




3. Book is flawless, not even scratches on the cover, cannot remember promptness of delivery.



4. Having owned the previous version of this book, I would have to say that the layout in this new version is much more linear and easy to follow. In addition to new experiments, the instructions are clear for a beginning organic lab student. That being said, however, the material that the book is constructed from is sub par...the pages are very delicate, seeming to be made of tissue paper...Over all, I would recommend this book for its content, but not for the craftsmanship.



5. Whats nice about this book is that the labs actually work, quite a change from gen. chem for me. All you need to know is included and you're not left confused about anything.

2 comments about Quantitative Chemical Analysis Student Solutions Manual.

1. The book was in great condition and it was really good condition. I paid for two day shipping. I ordered it on Wednesday and should have gotten it on Friday but I didn't get it until Monday or Tuesday afternoon. I watched the order tracker and it was in the warehouse ready to be shipped to me on Wednesday but it didn't ship till Thursday so I didn't get it till Monday or Tuesday.



2. This is a fairly good quantitative analysis book. However, there are no color pictures in the book. The book also seems to go into a lot of detail about some things that may never be tested on a test such as the ACS test. For example, sometimes it includes a lot of detailed information about outdated analytical instruments.

5 comments about Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach.

1. To be succinct:
   1) Thorough explanation of each subject.
   2) Subjects broken down into manageable chapters.
   3) Lots of worked problems.
   4) Lots of problems at the end of each chapter.
   5) Material presented in a logical, not necessarily historical, fashion.
   6) Layout is generally superior to other texts (spacious, not cramped)
   7) Get the solutions manual.
   
   Bear in mind most schools teach thermodynamics and kinetics, followed by quantum chemistry. This methodology is merely a reflection of the order of discovery, and not because quantum chemistry necessarily builds on thermo or kinetics. This text teaches quantum first, followed by thermo and kinetics. It's more logical to teach quantum first, but you can jump right into traditional physical chemistry with this text.
   
   Only recommendation:
   The publisher should package the book with the solutions manual. I'm a big fan of solutions manuals and a student is somewhat hobbled without one.



2. I received the correct book in excellent condition (matching the seller's description) in the timeframe I was told when I purchased it.



3. This is one of the poorest textbooks I've ever owned. It is wordy yet it explains very little. And there is one really annoying aspect to this book:
   The authors only ever introduce an equation once in the text. From thereon, they refer to that equation as "equation 17-1" or whatever number they designate it. So you're constantly having to turn back pages and entire chapters just to find out what stupid equation they are talking about. They also embed all the important tables within random chapters instead of being in an appendix, so good luck finding any constants or any other figures that would be put in a table.
   Another bad thing about this book is that they made an update to it and added two chapters but didn't change the ISBN. So some people get the newer version with the correct number of chapters and some people will pay the same price for the book missing at least 2 chapters that they will need in their p-chem class (this happened to my girlfriend who has the older book and I have the newer one and we didn't discover this until the fourth test!). I hate this book with a passion. It has crappy black and white illustrations,and instead of writing fractions like ft/sec or mol/L they write ft*sec(-1) and mol*L(-1) and it gets quite distracting when they have several terms in the denominator. It looks like it was written in the 70's. I will say as a side-note that it's very much worth getting the solutions manual if you get this book. The solutions manual is pretty well-done.



4. For those students who are REQUIRED to derive everything on their PCHM exams, THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU! Excellent supplement to that weak and required text book of yours, for sure. Good luck! PCHMI (Thermo-C) PCHMII (Q. Mechanics-B)



5. It's great. It's quite in depth, though you have to accept some parts of the math if you don't already know differential equations.
   It's understandable even to me, and the last chem course I took was just AP, but it's also very challenging and in depth. Highly recommend.

2 comments about Introduction to Organic Chemistry.

1. There are a lots pictures in the book, and explain theories very well. However, solutions for problems are not in this book, have to buy seperately.



2. This text is a valuable and well-written tool for any person that may have little familiarity with organic chemistry but is interested in learning. Text is accompanied by diagrams and pictures that provide visual aid to help in understanding. Throughout the chapters, sample questions are included along with descriptive answers that help understand the solution's process. Each chapter has questions pertaining to the material covered that are objective as well as questions that may be meaningful in a real-life context. Solutions to problems only exist in the text for odd-numbered questions. Even-numbered questions will require the solution manual.

3 comments about Introduction to Organic Laboratory Techniques: A Small-Scale Approach (Brooks/Cole Laboratory Series for Organic Chemistry).

1. An outstanding lab text for sophomore level 1-yr organic courses. Any chemistry/physical science major should not sell this book back at the end of the semester! Half of the book is dedicated to experiments which while informative is not the real gem here. The other half of the book covers techniques in organic and microscale chemistry. If you ever need to build a chromatographic column or do vacuum filtration again, you will be glad that you kept this book in your library.

   The techniques section alone justifies buying this book. Chemistry majors, microbiologists, environmental scientists and engineers will all find this text valuable in their future careers.




2. Dr. Pavia's class was so much fun. It was great to have a book written for our facility, by our instructors. I recommend this book to other schools because the techniques are clearly explained and the experiments are interesting.



3. It has taken this company a month to even send this book. It is quite amazing how slow this company and how it treats its customers. Do not expect books to come unless you want to wait til the book become a classic. Highly suggest to purchase from someone else. Luckly, I've been using a book from lab TA for my organic lab
   class.

1 comments about Concepts in Biochemistry.

1. Vitalism is a profoundly science-ejected concept, though many CAM or 'natural health' cabals falsely claim that vitalism survives scientific scrutiny.
   
   I quote:
   
   "during the 19th century, any biological process that could not be understood in chemical terms was explained by the doctrine of vitalism. Vitalists argued that it was the presence of a vital force (life force or spirit) that distinguished the living world from the inanimate world. The experiment that destroyed the idea of vitalism was the synthesis of urea [...] in 1828 [...by] Wohler [p.005...] Pasteur held firmly to his belief in the vital-force theory, that only whole, living organisms are capable of carrying out metabolism and other biochemical processes. However the vital-force theory was put to rest when Hans and Eduard Buchner demonstrated in the 1890s that cell-free extracts of yeast [...] could ferment glucose, sucrose, and other carbohydrates into ethanol [p.450...] vitalism: a now defunct doctrine that living organisms have a vital force that distinguishes them from the inanimate world [p.676]."
   
   -r.c.

2 comments about 5 Steps to a 5 AP Chemistry, 2008-2009 Edition (5 Steps to a 5 on the Advanced Placement Examinations).

1. There is no better AP Chemistry Review book, says my wife, an AP Chem teacher with a history of students scoring 3-5 (rarely a 1 or 2). In fact, I can't wait for the new edition of 5 Steps to a 5 for AP Computer Programming, and all the books in the series are simply excellent.
   The review is specific and detailed. The diagnostic exam at the beginning of each edition helps students zero in on those skills and areas where they are having the most problems. The book also outlines several methods and time scales to use for review, depending on how the student (or instructor) wishes to organize the review. All test questions at the end of each chapter are formatted exactly like the AP test questions and are often (if not always; it depends on the number of released items that ETS makes available for each subject) actual AP test questions. Finally, like any good test prep book, it discusses specific strategies for different sections of the exam, so students can maximize their score.



2. The book helped. A lot!
   
   My teacher was pretty bad, so this book helped fill in the gaps. I got a 4 on the exam. I did all the review in the book and sample questions and blah blah. Just consider this book as well amongst the other big name companies.
   
   The book is good, great even, it will not TEACH you the concepts, only refresh them. In other words, pay attention in your chem class and bring this book with you from Day 1. It'll help you understand and show how things are related (if your text book goes out of order, like mine). Enjoy.