General Chemistry

Rating:
Summary: General Chemistry bu Linus Pauling
Review: Although Linus Pauling is a Nobel Prize laureat, his text "General Chemistry" can be easily read and understood by the average high school graduate. The text is extremely comprehensive, yet straight forward. For more advanced readers, Pauling has included appendices, such as one on the tetrahedral bond, proving with such simplicity and elegance that the tetrahedral bond is the strongest bond of a four bond system.

Rating:
Summary: FINE, BUT STILL NEEDS TO BE WORKED ON
Review: Linus Pauling's "General Chemistry" meets the requirements of High School syllabus. But I must add that this Third Edition, which was published since 1989 needs to be updated. Revising and updating this text would ensure that it ranks among the reliable yardsticks, which provide complete coverage of all the topics: organic, inorganic and physical.
Another flaw that I found in this book is that it did not adhere to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemist, (IUPAC), nomenclature in many instances. This flaw will ensure that most students outside North America would not make it their first choice, when shopping for a chemistry text.

Rating:
Summary: FINE, BUT STILL NEEDS TO BE WORKED ON
Review: Linus Pauling's "General Chemistry" meets the requirements of High School syllabus. But I must add that this Third Edition, which was published since 1989 needs to be updated. Revising and updating this text would ensure that it ranks among the reliable yardsticks, which provide complete coverage of all the topics: organic, inorganic and physical.
Another flaw that I found in this book is that it did not adhere to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemist, (IUPAC), nomenclature in many instances. This flaw will ensure that most students outside North America would not make it their first choice, when shopping for a chemistry text.

Rating:
Summary: Pleasure Reading
Review: Linus Pauling's treatise on general chemistry is exciting and interesting. The book presents very basic but in-depth discussion of chemical phenomena such as thermodynamics and molecular structure. It is clear, reader-friendly, and easy to read. It is not meant to be just a textbook but a fun book for evening reading. No mathematical background is assumed. I recommend this book for undergraduate students as well as everyone who is interested in reading science but curbed by all the mathematical manipulations.

Rating:
Summary: Useful for High School!
Review: P>Obviously, I'm not an expert in every science, and my degree is in Physics, so I need to spend a lot of extra time researching and making sure my facts are correct. Although this is a college level book, I find it very helpful in making concepts clear. I am not into plagiarizing, but before I can write anything of my own, it needs to be absolutely clear in my own head.

This book is excellent at giving me that clarity. Besides his lucid explanations, there is his arrangement of topics. He puts topics together that belong together. Looking over what I had written before buying this book, I've realized that he has roughly the same ideas that I do on organization!

I also appreciate his clear, simple line drawings, and I think the stereoscopic drawings are just plain COOL! I even "borrowed" one just so my students could see it.

Complaints: Naturally, this is a college book, so it isn't ideal for my needs. Also, I have noticed a few items that are out of date. Of course, at the high school level, I don't often teach these things. Also, for a college book, it seems odd to me to hide the mathematics in the appendix. Even at the high school level, there is more math.

Overall, although this would be a poor choice as a primary source, it is excellent as a resource used in combination with other resources. It is also good for simply reading!

Rating:
Summary: Useful for High School!
Review: P>Obviously, I'm not an expert in every science, and my degree is in Physics, so I need to spend a lot of extra time researching and making sure my facts are correct. Although this is a college level book, I find it very helpful in making concepts clear. I am not into plagiarizing, but before I can write anything of my own, it needs to be absolutely clear in my own head.

This book is excellent at giving me that clarity. Besides his lucid explanations, there is his arrangement of topics. He puts topics together that belong together. Looking over what I had written before buying this book, I've realized that he has roughly the same ideas that I do on organization!

I also appreciate his clear, simple line drawings, and I think the stereoscopic drawings are just plain COOL! I even "borrowed" one just so my students could see it.

Complaints: Naturally, this is a college book, so it isn't ideal for my needs. Also, I have noticed a few items that are out of date. Of course, at the high school level, I don't often teach these things. Also, for a college book, it seems odd to me to hide the mathematics in the appendix. Even at the high school level, there is more math.

Overall, although this would be a poor choice as a primary source, it is excellent as a resource used in combination with other resources. It is also good for simply reading!

Rating:
Summary: The classic text is still great
Review: This is my 800th published review on Amazon so I thought I'd try to do something a little special. I review a lot of non-fiction and science books in various areas, and when I saw Pauling's classic text recently, I knew it fit the bill.

This is the unabridged Dover 1988 republication of the original 3rd edition published by W.H. Freeman and Co. in 1970 (the 1st ed. was 1947, if I remember right). At 972 pages, 26 long chapters, 16 appendices, and 283 figures and illustrations, it's a monster of a book even for a chemistry text.

When the text first appeared, it marked a major landmark and innovation in the teaching of chemistry in the extent to which Pauling was able to present the entire subject of chemistry in terms of its underlying unifying principles rather than as a collection of unrelated chemical facts. Pauling closely ties in the observable phenomena of chemistry with the most powerful theories, which he says include modern atomic and molecular theories, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics.

Not the least of its virtues is that it is, despite the high-level treatment, surprisingly easy and enjoyable to read. The occasional mathematical treatments aren't easy for the beginner, certainly, but overall the book is quite approachable in terms of the style.

Pauling presents statistical mechanics first since he believes it's easier to grasp for the beginning student than chemical thermodynamics. Although there is some advanced math and calculus, as I said, most of that is located in the many appendices. Here you'll find many topics discussed in much more mathmatical rigor and detail, such as Fourier analysis applied to crystal structures, the wave functions for hydrogenlike orbitals and bond orbitals, an alternative derivation of the Boltzmann Distrubition Law, the entropy of a perfect gas, electric polarizabilities and electric dipoles, moments, and other topics.

All of these noteworthy points aside, though, perhaps the greatest strength of the book is Pauling's ability to explain in clear and concise prose even the most difficult concepts, without getting lost in a morass of extraneous details. He also often gives practical examples to illustrate how seemingly esoteric chemical principles can be applied to very ordinary everyday phenomena. For example, the usual definition of an acid or base is that of a proton donor or acceptor. However, the Lewis theory of acids and bases proposes that a base is anything that has available an unshared pair of electrons, and an acid is anything that could attach itself to such a pair. This theory has the advantage of being able to explain the ability of substances other than hydrogen to change the color of indicators. Another application is the explanation of salt formation by the reactions of acidic oxides and basic oxides.

I just had one final comment. At this point much of my general chemistry is pretty rusty and I'm more up on specific topics such as metallurgy. But Pauling does a fine job of explaining important applied topics like this as well, and there are many very readable and clear explanations of important practical metallurgical applications and how they work, including basic metals and their properties and that of their most important alloys, and how basic operations work such as that of a blast furnace, reverberation furnace, Bessemer furnace, and so on. Pauling is equally at home dealing with the advanced physics of the Schrodinger wave equation or the more mundane aspects of industrial metallurgical operations.

Altogether, this is a great text by a great scientist which has yet to be surpassed in its powerful, unified, theoretical approach, its clear and concise style, and its completeness of coverage.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Undergraduate Text ever!
Review: When Linus Pauling was teaching undergraduates at Caltech, he found that none of the existing undergrad texts would serve his purpose.So he decided to write his own.This was in the 1940's.The result, 'General Chemistry', even after more than 50 years, is the best introduction to Chemistry at the University level that I know of.I discovered this book in my sophomore year, and after that I couldn't put it down.If you can really read this book thoroughly, you can probably say that you have an excellent grasp of most or almost all of the fundamental principles of Chemistry.Pauling's style of explaining the essentials without compromising on information is unparalleled.The small, simple calculations that he illustrates in each chapter are enlightening.In addition, the book is lavishly illustrated with beautiful figures by Roger Hayward.Pauling has a special knack of bringing out the flavour of seemingly boring topics like Thermochemistry and Ionic Equilibrium.If you have to have one book for setting your Chemical knowledge on the right path, trust me and buy this one.You will get enlightened by it forever.