General Chemistry

Rating:
Summary: A great aid for any 1st year chem student
Review: As a first year Chemistry student, I found Ebbing the most helpful textbook of the three that was prescribed for me.

Ebbing has it all: A logical layout, Nice diagrams to accompany explained concepts and best of all: a set of applicable problems at the end of each chapter. Ebbing's glossary is also one of the better ones you will come accross in General Chemistry Textbooks.

For the student who likes self-study, Ebbing is a gem, as it explains everything in a user-friendly, easy-reading easy-to-understand manner. It is, in fact, a Chemistry textbook that you can read just for the hell of it. If only I had Ebbing in highschool, my chemistry grades would have been that much higher.

It is not, however a textbook for those planning to major in chem. It is, as the title clearly says, a GENERAL CHEMISTRY textbook and should be treated as such. If you are, however, planning to major in more inter-disciplinary subjects that draw on chemistry , i.e. botany, geology and to an extent physics, Ebbing would be good to have around.

Rating:
Summary: Evaluation of Ebbing/Gammon General Chemistry Textbook
Review: I am majoring in Biochemistry and we use this textbook for 1st year General Chemistry. I am not completely satisfied with it because I would have liked to see MORE examples of worked-out-problems in the text. It does have nice pictures showing what the text is teaching and it does have lots of problems at the end of each chapter for students to work on. However, I would have liked to see more examples of solved problems because there needs to be this to aid the student of Chemistry learn the subject better.

Rating:
Summary: Gen Chem text on the easy side
Review: I don't recommend this book for those who have no background in Chemistry at all. The difinetion aren't clear (sometimes they're very confusing); some of the examples are too short and don't explain well. It's difficult to follow for the biginner. The CD that comes with is almost useless. The test as well as the example questions are almost the same (only the # that are different) There're also some answer mistakes. However, if you just want to review what you've already know, this is not a bad book to have!

Rating:
Summary: Error ridden. Was this *ever* proofed?
Review: Of all texts I've ever reviewed, this is the most error-ridden. In the later chapters the number of serious errors are extraordinary, averaging one every other page. Many of these are simple typos (e.g. p. 752 of the instructor's text where 0.16 becomes 0.17 halfway through the calculations for no reason). However, since the only examples of techniques contain the errors, this makes it very difficult for students to follow. The authors also do not consistently use significant figures. At points, they round off partly through an equation with no explanation. At other points, they simply drop digits (e.g. 0.128 becomes 0.12). Answers to problems in the back show similar problems, including clear precedence errors (e.g. 2 raised to 1/2 becomes 2^1/2=1). Practice problems included on the CD show similar flaws, with all of the multiple choice answers to some problems being incorrect, or the problems themselves incorrectly stated (asking for delta-E rather than delta-U). Unless the latest edition has corrected these, I'd advise everyone to pick another text. Regardless of its other merits (and it has many), the number of errors in it makes it more of a hindrance to students than a help.

Rating:
Summary: this book is crap
Review: this book is is crap. I am a Chemistry major and I understand the equations and relations very well, but when I first used this book in my general chemistry classes, it was a waste of my time. The book consists mainly of short examples and the book does not help to understand the relation of the equations. Also, the book as many errors. Because there are errors, you assume that every answer is possibly wrong and that you are doing the work wrong. The errors also do not help when you do have the correct answer. The authors will change the answers and will not inform you as to how they go the answer. If you are taking a Chemistry class and this book is the requirement, I suggest you talk to your professor or use another book for reference, this book is a tragedy.

Rating:
Summary: Gen Chem text on the easy side
Review: This is a text that is relatively low level among those for science majors. It is generally clearly written. If you find questions on your test consistantly harder than the ones in this text, you might have to find used copies of other "harder" textbooks (Zumdahl, Brown/LeMay/Bursten, or Oxtoby) and work some of the more challenging end-of-chapter problems. On the other hand, if you can understand the concepts and follow the explanations in the text, you will have to buy a copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chemistry or Chemistry for Dummies.

Rating:
Summary: A simple book for simple students.
Review: This was the assigned text for my first semester of college chemistry. During that one semester, I forced myself to read it without compromise, repulsive though it was.

In general, it seems that the author attempts to make up for their poor writing ability by using small examples of limited applicability to convey general ideas. This method should work well enough to prepare the reader for the relatively easy exercises that they will find at the end of each chapter, but it ultimately fails to prepare them for real-world problems.

Now I have heard that some students prefer examples to words, in which case they should look at this book. Yet for those of us who hope to fully understand the material after the exams are over, a more advanced book is necessary.

Rating:
Summary: Good, general, nice diagrams
Review: We use this text for our freshman chemistry course at Trent University, and have for a number of years (previous editions). It is equal or superior to virtually all other texts that I am aware of for a general course that includes both chemistry majors and others (biology, physics, etc.). Concepts are explained well, diagrams are easy to understand, and there is a profusion of examples in the text. It also includes a biochemistry chapter, which many other texts do not have. With the addition of bichem to many 1st year curricula, this is important.

If teaching a more rigorous/physical course directed solely to chem majors, this book may not be the best choice (perhaps Oxtoby and Nachtrieb would be a better choice).

This book is generally superior in quantity and quality of questions at the back of the chapter. All questions are paired with the odd numbered question having the answer in the back of the book. Students really like this feature.

As an instructor, there are a number of extras that are very helpful, including an alternate example manual (with examples to use in class that are complimentary to the text), a full set of figures on a CD-ROM which are easily transferred to Powerpoint for use in lectures, and a complete solutions manual.

There are a few small problems. The order in the text is not the order I teach in, but the chapters are pretty good at delineating the material so you can teach out of order. For example, Chapter 6 is thermochemistry, and Chapter 18 is the rest of thermodynamics - why 12 chapters between them? (To be fair, this system is used in a number of freshman texts.) Web resources for the student are lacking in that they cost extra (at least, in Canada), something many other publishers offer for free.

All in all, this is a very good text for a general course in freshman chemistry. It is well indexed, and should also be of use to anyone that needs a chemistry reference book.

Rating:
Summary: Good, general, nice diagrams
Review: We use this text for our freshman chemistry course at Trent University, and have for a number of years (previous editions). It is equal or superior to virtually all other texts that I am aware of for a general course that includes both chemistry majors and others (biology, physics, etc.). Concepts are explained well, diagrams are easy to understand, and there is a profusion of examples in the text. It also includes a biochemistry chapter, which many other texts do not have. With the addition of bichem to many 1st year curricula, this is important.

If teaching a more rigorous/physical course directed solely to chem majors, this book may not be the best choice (perhaps Oxtoby and Nachtrieb would be a better choice).

This book is generally superior in quantity and quality of questions at the back of the chapter. All questions are paired with the odd numbered question having the answer in the back of the book. Students really like this feature.

As an instructor, there are a number of extras that are very helpful, including an alternate example manual (with examples to use in class that are complimentary to the text), a full set of figures on a CD-ROM which are easily transferred to Powerpoint for use in lectures, and a complete solutions manual.

There are a few small problems. The order in the text is not the order I teach in, but the chapters are pretty good at delineating the material so you can teach out of order. For example, Chapter 6 is thermochemistry, and Chapter 18 is the rest of thermodynamics - why 12 chapters between them? (To be fair, this system is used in a number of freshman texts.) Web resources for the student are lacking in that they cost extra (at least, in Canada), something many other publishers offer for free.

All in all, this is a very good text for a general course in freshman chemistry. It is well indexed, and should also be of use to anyone that needs a chemistry reference book.