Atkins' Physical Chemistry

by Peter Atkins, Julio de Paula, James Keeler

Atkins' Physical Chemistry is widely acknowledged by both students and instructors around the globe to be the textbook of choice for studying physical chemistry. The eleventh edition has been enhanced with additional learning features and math support, and reorganized into discrete Topics, to make the text more flexible for teachers and more readable for students.

WebAssign

New for this edition, Atkins' Physical Chemistry can be packaged with WebAssign, a flexible and fully customizable online instructional solution. It allows instructors to deploy assignments and to instantly assess individual student performance. For packaging information, or to arrange a demo, contact your OUP sales representative.

Genres: Chemistry, Science, Textbooks, Physics, Nonfiction, Reference, Education

944 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 1978

About the author

Peter William Atkins is an English chemist and a Fellow of Lincoln College at the University of Oxford. He retired in 2007. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks, including Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, and Molecular Quantum Mechanics. Atkins is also the author of a number of popular science books, including Atkins' Molecules, Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science and On Being.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Sanjay]

It was the book that I read selectively when I was in my Sr. Secondary; and read it, more or less, from cover to cover in my graduation. I remember it as a beautiful book that enriched my knowledge of physical chemistry and made my fundamentals stronger. It's been many years now since I read anything related to Chemistry, but I will remember this book, along with Organic Chemistry by Morrison & Boyd, that I enjoyed reading thoroughly.

[litart toujours]

Der Stoff für Tränen....deren gelösten Salzgehalt und Dampfdruck in Abhängigkeit der physikal-chemischen Freiheitsgrade bestimmen kannst.

Nur die Harten komm'en Garten

All Killer No Filler

straight up heat

[Martina]

This is an amazing book on physical chemistry. Its scope is all-encompassing and it's written in a pleasant pedagogical style, as is usual for any book from Atkins. While it may not be suited for absolute beginners, the crowd that already has some knowledge on the subject will surely enjoy it. I know I have!

[Hollis Williams]

I'm not entirely sure why this book receives so many negative reviews from students of chemistry. It's not perfect, but I don't know of a book that gives a better general overview of physical chemistry. Point me towards it if you know of one.

[Elisabeth]

9th edition. I saw some reviews that were bewildered to see the low ratings. Here is why I give this book a low rating:

I have gone through this whole book over the last year. As I read it, and especially towards chapters 17,18,19,20,21, things feel really jumbled around. I will go through a passage, feel like I understand it, and then I see an example using definitions that it had not previously introduced. It often skips many steps. I was doing Ch 15 homework, and the equation I was supposed to use for one of them was from Ch 16. I'm not there yet! The homework used equations or forms of the primary equation that were not introduced and not listed in the end-chapter formulas list. If it did, then it would just be printed with nothing really being said about it, but I'm expected to apply it. These were common problems for me. I am predisposed towards biochemistry, and physical chemistry just doesn't work for me. This book doesn't work for me.

At the very end of all my physical chemistry courses, I have been fortunate enough to find the classic big red book: McQuarrie & Simon. That book has been a lifesaver. I have been learning physical chemistry for the first time in my life, albeit poorly. It uses words to keep you on track, followed by the equations. I feel like McQuarrie puts things in to English much better than Atkins. I also feel like McQuarrie is better at putting things in to the overall context of what we are doing and what our end goal is. The flow of the chapters is very tight... they roll into each other nicely. When McQuarrie talks about derivative or integrated forms of these equations, there is context and it explains more deeply what is happening when you apply the derivative forms.

I have gone through the entire Atkins book during my courses, and I have hardly learned anything from it. McQuarrie & Simon lifts the veil. If Atkins works for you, then that's great. If it isn't working for you, try McQuarrie. It's a little more reading than Atkins but I get through it way faster because I spend less time trying to decode everything.

[Dilara (Taylor's Version)]

Its a love/hate relationship, but at the end of the day I still come back to it with a smile on my face❤️

[Malcolm Sim]

Ouchie my head hurt read this

[Brett Williams]

A noble work of the intellect

Murray Rothland wrote, “Every once in a while the human race pauses in the job of botching its affairs and redeems itself by a noble work of the intellect”. Atkins book is just such a noble work. Rare is it to find a technical text that reads more like a novel, but Atkins does. Not only is the topic fascinating on its own (mostly the physics of molecules), but Atkins raises it to the level of riveting. In those far off years of the university experience for this reader, it was said only a genius could grasp physical chemistry – not true, at least not with Atkins leading the way. Atkins uses varied tools with so many well-chosen angles on description that the reader sees things in nature never realized before. Most often through analogies to what we know well, e.g. the familiar constructive & destructive interference (wave mechanics) applied to wave functions (Schrödinger's sometimes confounding quantum probability description) yielding electron orbitals with shapes that suddenly make sense. That “aha” experience is so frequently felt while reading this book it’s hard to put it down, for anything. There are apparently several versions of this 2006 8th edition. The two in paperback come in color or black-&-white. There’s also 4 years of access to the book’s website, including the text, all its figures, spread sheets and MathCad models. A salute to Oxford University Press and Atkins for this remarkable resource.

[Reading Harbor]

I love this book! It is really well written. There is a lot of material and I wouldn't necessary recommend carrying it around in your book bag like I did, unless you have to, you will end up with back problems - but this is truly comprehensive. The illustrations are very helpful and match with the text. Atkins and team did a great job of thoroughly explaining the concepts. I found this text to be extremely useful in teaching me P chem. Everyone else bombed their exams because they were trying to learn from the lectures. I did really well because I had this book. Every concept is explained extremely clearly and easily. If you read through, all the concepts make sense. Many other science books are really dry and are hard to follow. But not this one. This is one of my favorites - and I have been forced to read a lot of science books in my day.

[Shubham]

Best book in the world for physical chemistry

[Dimitri Rascalov]

What can I say? One of the quintessential chemistry books, a true bible of physical chemistry. A must for any true chemist, my go-to reference for P.Chem.

[Alex Is Wolf]

Awesome text book for physical chemistry ....... In undergraduate level.

Love reading it.

[Negar]

Although it doesn't have all of the mathematical proof, it has a clear point of view. I advise you to read Atkins' text but focus on the Alberti problems.
Atkins alone probably won't give you a better knowledge of thermodynamics; you'll need to work through all the problems.

[Lauren Heald]

A bookshelf staple for physical chemists.

[Samia Sheikh]

Go suck ya mum

[Amber]

Granted, I have the 7th edition of this, but it was lovely.

[Peter]

There is no other text book that explains physical chemistry as well. Absolutely lucid and wonderful. You never thought physical chemistry could be this interesting!

[KyAnh Do]

This is the go-to introductory text for Physical Chemistry majors. One noticeable feature is that this book has a much more colorful and eye-catching design compared to other textbooks we usually read, and it is richly illustrated.
The exercises range from easy to extremely challenging. For the hard ones, it sometimes took me two whole days to crack the solution!
However, one thing that baffles me is the 'Electrode Kinetics' topic. This current edition seems to cover less content and has fewer exercises on this topic compared to the older versions.

C'est l'ouvrage d'introduction de référence pour les étudiants en chimie physique. Ce qui saute aux yeux, c'est sa mise en page colorée et bien plus attrayante que celle des autres manuels classiques, avec de nombreuses illustrations.
Les exercices varient du simple au très complexe. Pour les plus difficiles, il m'a parfois fallu deux jours entiers pour trouver la solution !
Cependant, je suis un peu perplexe concernant le chapitre sur la cinétique des électrodes (Electrode Kinetics). Cette édition semble moins détaillée et propose moins d'exercices sur ce sujet que les versions précédentes

[Alan Eister]

Could use a proof section for those sections which are mathematics heavy, where they treat the proof as they do in theoretical chemistry papers. Otherwise, quite well written.

[Strong Extraordinary Dreams]

It was like stepping into another world.

This was my chemistry text book for two years and I would sometimes spend a morning on one single page.

Great book, great book.

[George Hohbach]

Well-written and easy to understand.

[Almodather Awad]

One of the best texts available in physical chemistry. It blends authority of the author with continuous revision and width of material coverage. It suits all sorts of undergraduate courses.

[Sanaamjad]

Want to read it

[Kamil Tamiola]

Simply a must-read for every natural sciences student.

[Muhammad Haris]

good

[Esraa Mohamed]

it is the best

[Endi Tafani]

I love this book

[Finola Knöll]

Well explained but made me cry multiple times.

[Nelle Madera]

hard 2 read, but im a C grade chem grad

[Emma Johansson]

The more you read, the less you fell like you understand. Truly magic.