Chemistry by Blackman, Allan, Bottle, Steve, Schmid, Siegbert, Mocerino, (2007) Paperback

by Blackman

Chemistry has been developed to meet the content needs of a first year chemistry course. It presents the appropriate balance of organic, inorganic and physical chemistry in an integrated single volume, providing lecturers with all the material they need to successfully lead their students through their first year of chemistry. Throughout the text the authors focus on the core chemistry concepts, and feature many interesting and relevant research and chemical applications to give students a sense of the excitement and huge potential that a career in chemistry can offer them.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Textbooks

1144 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2005

Reviews

[Bert]

I never have to read this book again. What a beautiful moment.

[Chris Fellows · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is our current First Year Chemistry textbook. It looks like it has the same number of chapters as similar chemistry textbooks, but it is denser and there is more packed into each chapter. For instance, Chapters 4 and 5 are each equivalent to two chapters in Brown and LeMay's Australasian edition, and Chapter 16 corresponds to something between two and three Brown and LeMay chapters.

Overall it gives good coverage, is not overly opaque in its language, and has plenty of problems to work through with each chapter.

A ruthlessly condensed 30-40% off version would be very welcome; Blackman et al. shares a tendency with a lot of these First Year Chemistry textbooks to give a rule, then immediately talk about some interesting and exciting exceptions to the rule, which the students don't really need to know about.

And p.733 of the 2nd Edition has my favourite textbook typo ever.

[Disclaimer: I was a technical editor on the 2nd and 3rd editions of the Brown and LeMay Australasian Edition. But I just had to write something when I saw this book sitting here with no reviews.]

[Evan Milner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chemistry by Blackman et al. is not terrible by any means, but contains nothing to make it stand out from a plethora of similar titles. Even though my copy is only the 2nd edition, it already has that stale, written (and rewritten) by committee prose style that makes each page a mental trudge, even when the topic matter is inherently fascinating. To be sure, I have encountered much worse. I just don't see why we can't expect better from a book that is intended to serve as an entry point into one of the major branches of science at a university level.

The content and chapter organization is more or less the same as almost every other general chemistry text, begging the question: why does this one even exist? The inclusion of Australia specific content is nice though.

Verdict: Adequate but uninspiring.

[Julian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've entered the deep-end of the internet now that I'm reviewing my chemistry textbook. Poor explanations of concepts and not enough 'real world' examples of chemistry in action. Also, why is it a recurring theme to not include the even answers to questions? Two stars because people spent a lot of time putting this together, and sometimes I refer to it.