Physical Chemistry

Rating:
Summary: Presentation Could be Clearer.
Review: I am a physical chemist and this book CONTAINS all the important essentials on the subject, but at the same time presents it in a disorganized boring manner... The subject in general seems to suffer from a callous dryness in presentation and explaination.

Rating:
Summary: Worse than worthless
Review: Never have I endured such anguish while using a textbook in a course that I otherwise enjoyed. Atkins's text has several drawbacks. First, it has no unifying structure. Instead of presenting material with a fundamental chassis of mathematical reasoning (as is the case with classic thermodynamic textbooks from Reif and Kittel), he employs a number of different techniques on a seemingly ad hoc basis which leaves the reader without an understanding of the fundamental connectedness of thermodynamic topics. An alternative (provided by the authors I mentioned above) is fundamentally a statistical approach to system analysis. Expectation values, time averages, and ensemble analysis are fundamental tools that can be applied to almost every topic in Atkins's text. Furthermore, despite the unfamiliar notation of this kind of analysis, once a student becomes familiar with statistical interpretations, he or she can grasp new material much more quickly because regardless of topic, the method of analysis is the same. Second, his problems and exercises are artificially difficult. The portions of the problems that deal with new material presented in the previous sections are not difficult, but Atkins makes them artificially difficult by asking for answers in units that are different from the units presented in the problem wording. Alternatively, a problem will require the student to search through opaque data tables in the back of the book to find the numerical values for quantities referred to by the problem; this would not be such a disaster if Atkins's book didn't weigh so much and this was not such a common requirement. I don't see any reason why he should place such an emphasis on the plug-and-chug system of higher education. This is a collegiate textbook, we should be demonstrating our knowledge of the theoretical foundations of thermochemistry and saving the numerical tedium for the lab (when we might actually care about the answer). Finally, the diagrams in this book are useless at best, confusing at worst. I appreciate the pretty colors he employs, but I would prefer Atkins to put his artistic energy into labelling his axes in obvious ways with familiar units. He fails to include appropriate graphs of important relationships, instead opting to draw unclear diagrams of the initial conditions upon which his derivations are based. Properly drawn, such diagrams can be useful, but not at the expense of relational charts and figures. I would never use this book in a class I taught, nor would I ever recommend it to a friend or collegue as a reference.

Rating:
Summary: Total garbage.
Review: This terrible text did not provide enough detail in which to understand any of the problems or derivations. The publisher did provide a correction sheet of over 200 mistakes, but sadly left out another binding which started coming off literally two weeks after purchase. I have no idea how this text was organized. It seems to have been a half hearted attempt at best, and a total ripoff at worst. As a physical chemist, I am always appalled at the quality of this text.

Rating:
Summary: A book suitable for engineers.
Review: For chemists and physists this book is poor, but to engineers it is a good beginning course in PChem. The only problem, and the worst one for a book, is the writing style, I and many of my freinds feel asleep when read it. Although this problem, it has an excellent presentation of PChem to engineers.

Rating:
Summary: The most intelligently written book on the subject
Review: Atkins shows a clear passion for the presentation of this subject. Compared to most other volumes on this subject, this text is far more thorough and interesting to the reader. Concepts in the field which baffled me after reading other textbooks are rendered quite clear after reading Atkins. While I have not had the opportunity to browse over the 6th edition yet, I find it hard to believe that the 5th edition could be improved upon. An outstanding effort, well worth the reading time of any true scientist.

Rating:
Summary: Could be worse
Review: This was the textbook for my physical chemistry I & II classes, and though hideously boring and amazingly disorganized for such a text, it forced me to learn the concepts. (that, and the exams) I hated Pchem intensely, but it is such a boring subject to survey (vs. specific topics) that I cannot imagine a general PChem text ever being interesting and comprehensive at the same time. Furthermore, it could be much worse, as the text for our advanced inorganic course (Bowser) proved.

Rating:
Summary: Horrendous presentation of physical chemistry
Review: This book is far too basic for even the average chemistry student, much less one who might be interested in knowing why some of the concepts discussed happen to be true. The solutions to problems are incorrect on many occasions, and the text is poorly organized and tends to not follow the logical progression of learning this subject material. I would very highly not recommend this text to anybody, but would rather recommend specific texts on molecular spectroscopy and quantum chemistry (the McQuarrie text is especially good).

Rating:
Summary: A great book.
Review: The text is depicted extremely well through the mathematics employed, a thorough reference source, perfect for those who enjoy physics and calculus, as well as chemistry.

Rating:
Summary: Well integrated review of modern physical chemistry.
Review: Atkins does an amazing job of shedding light on current theories in physical and quantum chemistry. The sections on molecular vibrational analysis rival the work of the finest authors in the field.

Rating:
Summary: Didactic and up-to-date textbook on most important topics.
Review: An up-to-date textbook on the main and selected topics included in most undergraduate courses of physical-chemistry for chemistry, engineering, sciences and related fields curricula. Subjects include fluids(gases and liquids), solid state chemistry, quantum theory, electrochemistry, surface phenomena, chemical kinectics, thermodynamics, among others. All of the material is presented with mathematical rigor, although nothing but essential calculus knowledge is required. Highly recommended