Comments on: Chemical Principles Enhanced Edition with Enhanced WebAssign with

By: H. Hagopian

H. Hagopian — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:26:18 +0000

Waste of Money
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
Not only did my chemistry class not use this book, but I cannot imagine how ANY class could use this. This book is so badly written, that it isn’t even worth opening. It doesn’t follow any particular order, and it frequently jumps back and forth between highly advanced topics and surprisingly dumb examples. Reading through even a single chapter of this book will lower the intelligence quotient of any sane individual. I suppose this book could serve a useful purpose, but only if that purpose was to teach the students to forget what they already knew about chemistry. I think I’ve made my point: do not buy this book under any circumstances.

By: Noah

Noah — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:50:14 +0000

Chemical Principles
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Chemical Principles

Chemical Principles is a fantastic book! I use it as a reference text with anything i dont understand being looked up straight away in this book. I am a high school student who has found this book to be very useful in my studies of chemistry!

I recommend that you buy this book as i found it easy to understand and has many examples questions and activities for you to do.

By: Eric Boyer

Eric Boyer — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:02:25 +0000

Pretty Good
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Overall this is a pretty good textbook. Explanations are pretty good, but my chemistry textbooks from high school presented subjects in a more straight-forward and easier to understand way. Also, this textbook is only meant for people who have good knowledge of high school chemistry already.

By: Ivan Ilych

Ivan Ilych — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:31:01 +0000

Unnecessarily complicated
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I transferred to a college which uses this textbook for their chemistry sequence, so I’m able to compare it to the one I used before. This textbook doesn’t explain very well. Instead of presenting what’s important, the author spends too much time deriving equations, something which first year chemistry students do not need to know. Important equations that are highlighted in my other chemistry textbook were not even highlighted or boxed in Zumdahl. If you have to use this textbook, good luck. If you have a choice or you’re self-studying chemistry, stay away from Zumdahl. There are much better options.

By: M. Reed

M. Reed — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:19:08 +0000

Why does my university use this book?
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
Why does my university use this book? The University of Washington uses this book to weed out the pre med students. Why do they choose this book? Zumdahl purposely wrote this book to be confusing. Try reading pp. 668 through 670 in the fifth edition. He wrote this to be especially confusing by not being consistent with phase signs nor giving clear statements, such as “When the phase of the right orbital is reversed and combined with the left orbital.” What orbitals is he talking about? The ones on a figure, that happen to be on a different page, which is not in view when reading this page? This book is horrible and is designed for the student to fail. Thank you Zumdahl and UW for trying to ruin chemistry for your students.

By: Ariana Zarate

Ariana Zarate — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:13:34 +0000

timely, great purchase
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
THe book was in great condition, like new and it arrived in a timely fashion. I had no problems what so ever.

Great price!

By: Jordan G. Henry

Jordan G. Henry — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:02:39 +0000

Thank You
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
With college expenses being so high, it was nice to get a cheap textbook compared to the school bookstore prices.

By: Aaron Barkatt

Aaron Barkatt — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:00:08 +0000

Amazon.com, please check your spelling
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a principle is a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine or assumption; a principal is a person who has controlling authority or is in a leading position. Zumdahl correctly named his book “Chemical PRINCIPLES”. Amazon.com, please follow suit.

By: Jacob Simmering

Jacob Simmering — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:13:49 +0000

Maybe good for AP Highschool
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
This is the book my prof had us use for GenChem (129) my freshmen year of college. The book isn’t the best I have seen and if I hadn’t had a really rigorous prep in AP Chem I would have been lost in the reading. I didn’t think the book was very clear with the formulae. It spent a lot of time explaining how a formula was derived, a student should have an understanding of the reasoning for the formula (or George Berkeley will yell), but this text does not give the formula and what all the variables are at once point. This makes review and looking up formulae rather labourous. The text misses a few important ideas (intensive vs. extensive properties) but spends a rather excessive amount of time on “present sources of energy” in an attempt, I presume, to relate the text to daily life. The data in the back of the book doesn’t match up with a good deal of the data I have encountered elsewhere (while the difference isn’t huge, it is present). Also, this may be because I came from a background where strict usage of sig figs was required, no points could be awarded if there were mistakes in the sig figs, I have noticed that the text plays rather “loose” with the sig figs. Also, it has comments like “We are keeping track of the sign value for this number in our heads.” Furthermore, some of the vocab usage is off from what it should be (i.e. “All values are assumed precise to at least plus/minus 1.” is noted on the list of thermodynamic data, it means the data is accurate, how close to the “true” value, and not precise, how close the tests are to one another). These are all minor problems, but proper use of vocab and sig figs are vital to the ability of a student to communcate properly and therefore I feel that the text should provide a model for the student.

Of the GenChem textbooks I have used, I vastly prefer Chemistry : The Central Science by Brown, LeMay and Bursten.

By: S. Petty

S. Petty — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:53:15 +0000

Use 5th edition if you can…
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
There is very little difference between this edition and the previous one which is normally the case with college textbooks today. It’s a mystery to me why colleges use any material by this author. Brooks and Cole should stop publishing him. The Zumdahl methods for teaching chemistry are truly awful. You can find various mistakes in this and previous editions of this text. His derivation regarding the ideal gas law is one example. Why even include it in the text if you can’t do it correctly? He obviously does not understand basic Newtonian Physics.