Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews Chemistry: Molecules, Matter, and Change, 4th Edition by Loretta Jones and Peter Atkins Freeman: New York, 2000. 998 pp + appendices. ISBN 0-7167-4257-8. $84. reviewed by Norbert J. Pienta
Another generation of general chemistry textbooks have the opportunity to reflect the interest and activity in systematic reform from the decade of the 1990s. What changes or innovations can we expect in a textbook in its 4th edition? Jones, a chemistry education researcher, joined Atkins, a popular author of advanced texts, in the previous edition. The stereotypes of a p-chem text author and a chemical educator bring up images of a team effort between an irresistible force and immovable object. (I can’t even imagine which is which.) Will math, calculations, and derivations win or lose to visualizations, concept maps, and case studies? Now I can return to reality. … It’s a handsome book, although I like the inside better than the cover. Design and layout are important because we have to keep students’ attention but still have a chance that they will read some of the text and perhaps find some useful information in there. The text itself is the standard mix of words; chunks that appear in italics, boldface, or in boxes; pictures and figures; equations; and examples. Small tables of data, short highlights and summaries, and descriptive pictures and figures occupy the white space on the outside margins of a page but not to the point of filling too much of it. Very readable. Not too busy. It’s a general chemistry textbook so I had better say something controversial about the presence and order of topics. The book is in its fourth edition, the authors are well-known educators, and the publisher is one of the few survivors, so what kind of surprises did you expect? The first ten chapters are on matter, moles, reactions, stoichiometry, gases, thermo, atomic structure, bonds, molecular structure, and condensed matter, respectively. The next twelve chapters cover organic, solutions, kinetics, equilibrium, acids and bases, applied solution equilibrium, free energy, electrochemistry, the first four main groups, the last four main groups, transition metals, and nuclear chemistry, respectively. So all we can argue about is Chapter 11, which includes organic structures, polymers, and biopolymers. The authors use plenty of organic structures earlier but don’t cover the subject systematically until the middle of the course. Descriptive inorganic chemistry is covered in three chapters near the end of the book. An effort is made to include interesting applications (including the Star Trek character Worf ), but I am not sure anyone can make these chapters read like anything but the Acme Chemical catalog. (That includes plenty of others that have tried. Sorry, but that’s what my students tell me also.) Buckyballs and steel are in but there is not much about semiconductors and superconductors, materials in general, or bioinorganic topics. If they included everything, I’d probably be whining that the book is too long. Besides, there’s always the next edition!
What about chemistry education and pedagogy issues? That’s a strong point, since the book contains many (most?) of the items that one can put into a textbook. We can argue about the value of those separate boxes that contain applications or case studies. They are called “connections” in this book, and my students are about equally split on whether to read them. This book has an effective feature called “analogies”, boxed text of a few lines that draws an everyday analogy to a chemical concept. A second useful set of features is called a “toolbox” and each one contains a paired mathematical and visual approach to a problem-solving algorithm. The graphic is intended to help students visualize the process of the calculation. A third feature is really a philosophy that is part of the visual presentation of many concepts. Such graphics contain several portions, representing the macroscopic, the microscopic, and the symbolic. These components demonstrate what one would actually expect to see when looking at a substance or process, a “view” of the molecular level, and finally a more abstract representation that summarizes the idea or concept. The language and level of the text, the illustrated examples, and the end-of-chapter problems make this text appropriate for a range of audiences including majors. The chapter text contains solved problems but also additional, derivative ones for self-assessment. The end-of-chapter problems range from ca. 90 to well over 120 in some instances; they are arranged by chapter topic and are followed by supplementary, applied, and integrated exercises that extend the problem-solving challenge. The book comes with two CD-ROM disks (one for visualization and another for problem-solving skills) and a litany of ancillaries (instructors’ resource CD-ROM; a complete Web site with self-help, lab, and expansion modules, and self-assessment; online testing; a student study guide, student solutions manual; teaching assistant manual; transparencies; and test bank). References to the multimedia are integrated into the text using icons found throughout the book margins. Details about the activities on the multimedia CD-ROM appear in a student activities book (included in the price of the text) that categorizes the media features into 21 types and identifies each icon location in the textbook by topic, activity, source of material, and time estimate for completion. Assuming that the time estimates are better than the ones provided by the IRS on tax forms, this feature seems to me to be the one of greatest value. However, some instructors may like the ability to identify activities by number, as a method of assigning them, thus providing the only likelihood that large percentages of students will complete them. The visualization CD-ROM has plenty of nifty animations, simulations, and interactive activities. Likewise, the problem-solving disk has an abundance of self-assessment problems and exercises, 3-D molecular representations to manipulate, and other tools. So little time and so much to do! In summary, this book is one worth adding to your adoption short list. Norbert J. Pienta is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242;
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 7 July 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
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