Chemistry

by Steven Zumdah

Zumdahl's conceptual approach to problem-solving, early and thorough treatment of reactions, and integration of descriptive chemistry and chemical principles throughout are key elements to the success of this bestseller. By encouraging students to understand qualitative concepts before considering quantitative problems, Chemistry helps students build a solid understanding of topics and avoid common misconceptions.

The text also includes new Chemical Impact boxes that present everyday applications of chemistry, plus over 200 redesigned illustrations with greater clarity and emphasis on molecular-level illustrations.

Genres: Science, Chemistry, Textbooks, Nonfiction, Reference, Engineering, Read For School

1091 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[reagan · Rating 1 out of 5]

0/10, i would NOT recommend this book. Chemistry sucks.

[Prajna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book assumes too much previous knowledge. It seems like it was written more for teachers than for the students. I'd much rather have every detail explained.

[Iviana (The Sign Painter) Mʘ‿ʘP · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the worst textbooks I've ever had. Often times, it did a poor job of explaining thing and was loaded with grammatical errors (but hey, it's a chemistry textbook, and no one wants to edit a chemistry text book--not even me! Especially not me).

Also, it tries too hard to be funny, especially with all of the questions that start with, "Your friend tells you ..." and ends with "What do you say to them?" Because what it wants is for you to figure out and correct what your "friend" has said, but phrases the question such that you could answer, "two stars dickbutt" and still be right without actually doing any work. (This is not to mention the one question that asked you to explain how the "magic" of pH indicators worked e_O or the remarks in the margins, such as "Don't taste chemicals!" in Chapter 14).

So many pet peeves in this book, including the fact that NONE of the tables have lines separating each row, so attempting to look up any sort of value in the appendixes (which was often, especially in Chapters 16 and 17) was a pain in the ass.

[Shimmerngspirit · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's all about the passion and intrigue that occur when molocules collide. Oh baby, hot quantum sex.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's a crappy text book. I hate it.

[Bonum · Rating 1 out of 5]

I want to kill myself

[Amid عميد · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chemistry by Steven S. Zumdahl and Susan A. Zumdahl offers a comprehensive overview of the subject. As part of my general chemistry lecture, I found the book's explanations to be clear and helpful in understanding complex concepts. However, it fell short in providing important visual interpretations, such as trends in atomic radius within the periodic table. While informative, the lack of visual aids detracted from the overall learning experience. I rate it three out of five stars for its content but suggest supplementing it with additional resources for a more comprehensive understanding.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t read too much into a 3 star rating ... this is a darn good text. As a teacher of students taking chemistry, I liked it ... but I doubt my students would have found it easy reading. It is dense. However, it has all of the necessary mathematics, for an introductory text. It hits all of the right topics and it has fairly good support materials – not great, but fairly good. The authors have worked to update real world applications to the chemistry being discussed.

Any drawbacks are not ascribed to the work of the phenomenally talented authors. Rather it is with the publishing houses that have forced most, but not all, first year text books to take the same old tired approaches. Cengage is a trying though..but could push those issue more. Secondly despite what the press on the issue may say, serious conversations as to what must be included, what should be included and what should not be included, in a first-year chemistry text / curriculum are not really happening. A truly conceptual approach is missing, as we are tied to the same paradigms of tests and “if I learned it and in such a fashion”, then everyone else can.

The critical thinking approach in the text is not bad, but hardly new. The text would do better to give more worked-out problems using it. Support materials suffer from the fact that the authors don’t actually write them and you see discreet differences between the text and the support materials. Publishing houses for first year textbooks believe these days, I suspect, that if they just throw a computerized piece into the text it’ll work very well for the student. To be interactive much greater thought must be given to what today’s student is bringing to the table and to what they are not.

This is a good, solid intro text. I just don’t know if it moves us very much forward.

[Nadia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like this book had its flaws, but had strong points also.
Pros:
-Plenty of practice problems, ranging from simple to challenging
-Nice worked out examples to guide you
-Some chapters are just really good
Cons:
-Tries too hard to be funny/relatable
-Seems to have lots of extra, unnecessary information/formulas
-Some parts of the appendixes were lacking, IMO
Decent book. I'm sure there are better ones.
NOTE: I used this book in AP chemistry, so I'm speaking from experience with that. It might be different for non-AP levels, like a college chemistry course.

[Chris Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great text. Used it to study for the MCAT to good effect as well.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dislike this textbook because of the memories they inspire, but at the same time, it’s the thing that helped me get through chemistry of solutions

[Callie Hayes · Rating 2 out of 5]

good riddance

[alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

We'll see if i pass the ap exam in july (1 star if i don't :p)

[Hermione Granger · Rating 1 out of 5]

TERRIBLE

[Mukil Shanmugam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This textbook was thoroughly explains many, many different aspects of chemistry,. From the simplest topics such as atoms and molecules to complex ones such as thermodynamics and organic chemistry, each topic is given a chapter, including lots of text that is accompanied by pictures, diagrams, and charts. This is one thing I really enjoyed about this book; the pictures and diagrams. When trying to understand chemistry, it is often necessary to have pictures and diagrams to be able to visualize the concepts being explained. Another aspect of this book that I enjoyed was the question bank at the end of each chapter; it provided a good opportunity to solidify any knowledge that wasn't fully understood from the reading. One thing I did not enjoy was that the writing style became very drab and boring at points. While this is okay and somewhat expected due to it being a textbook, it still provides a major problem; any portions of the book that the reader glazed over because of the writing style is a portion of knowledge missing. Another potential problem for many is that this book does assume a good amount of previous knowledge. Personally, I did not encounter this problem, and therefore I really, really enjoyed reading and learning chemistry from this textbook.

[Chris Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic text, even if the subject is presented in a wacky order. For example, chapter 7’s periodicity trends should probably be earlier in the book. Also, stoichiometry and gas and solution calculations are discussed before introducing types of simple bonds? I think this may be why other reviewers complain that “too much advance knowledge is required.” The info is there, just rearrange the chapters as u see fit and it’s a great choice for general chemistry.

[Irene Convey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stimulating.

[Abigail · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was assigned for my college chemistry course. I was not a fan of the layout and did not find it to be super helpful either. It was not the worst textbook or a complete waste of my time though.

[Jakob Kapala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was a pretty good textbook from what I remember. Chemistry is really its own field so it was difficult at first but with some careful reading and focus of the emphasized materials and end of chapter summaries, I ended up getting a lot out of Chemistry 1 and 2.

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

AP Chem book

[Olawoyin Temidayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

To those who low-rated this book, well, its a great book for me, I love d chemistry of solution, lots of calc. nd great explanations. It really made me have an A in chm.

[Jackie L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The score on my AP test is the rating of this book. In Zumdahl we trust.

[mishu_2432 · Rating 3 out of 5]

honestly kinda liked in high school. you just need drink some tea and sit down somewhere near a lamp and it’s a good read. not the best but it’s ok

[Mili · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the better chemistry textbooks I've had to read

[Jamie O'Neill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some plot points drag on a bit too much. By the time I reached part z of drawing lewis structures I had long since lost interest.

[Danielle Cozzola · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you took Chem 102 in Fall 2012 at UIUC, then this is the textbook you used. I don't remember absolutely hating it, but I don't recall loving it either.

[Liepa Banaite]

"perskaityk kaip romana"

[Sathvik Kakanuru]

This book, is common to most of the schools that teach chemistry around my area and so have already been approved by schools to teach students about chemistry and there is great reason for this. There are many in text problems and they all have in depth solutions with every step of work shown and also many cultural connections to tie the concepts to real-life situations and problems and so help students understand the purpose of learning chemistry to help in their daily lives and also to help them decide an occupation with chemistry knowledge and also the various benefits of knowing chemistry for agriculture and metallurgy. One negative is a huge deficit in organic chem with only one chapter covering organic chem and this is covered in most basic biology books and so can be seen hugely insufficient.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very poorly constructed book! Most of the characters are completely marginal and very few last more then a page or two! Themes and plots get introduced, resolved and dropped every other page! Sure sometimes these show up again later on in a new form but that's kind of rare actually. There were lots of elements to it, thats for sure. Overall I don't know if I could recommend it but I will say this...

It helped me learn chemistry. And thats pretty neat.

[Madeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used this textbook for my AP Chemistry class last year. I liked it because it gave you a lot of workout problems to do. However, it didn't really explain things well. I always had to ask my teacher what it meant because the wording was kind of weird. Hopefully I'll like my new chemistry textbook this year...IN COLLEGE!!!!

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very nice textbook with thorough explanations and many problem examples. My only complaint concerning this text is that the homework problems are significantly more difficult than the text examples and the odd number answers in the back of the book shows no explanation of how to complete these higher level problems. Overall, though, a nice text.