Chemical Education Today
book & media reviews Two General Chemistry Textbooks: Chemistry: The Central Science, 7th ed. Theodore L. Brown, H. Eugene LeMay, Jr., and Bruce E. Bursten. Prentice-Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997. xxxi + 991 pp + appendices. Figs. and Tables. 20.8 × 26.0 cm. Chemistry & Chemical Reactivity, 3rd ed. John C. Kotz and Paul Treichel, Jr. Saunders: Fort Worth, TX, 1996. xxxii + 1121 pp + appendices. Figs. and tables. 22.4 × 26.2 cm. The two textbooks discussed in this review are both fine general chemistry texts, designed for mainline firstyear college courses. Adopters of either text will find them complete, well written textbooks with clean, clear teaching styles. Both books follow traditional general chemistry outlines, with traditional content. While applications are well interwoven throughout both texts, neither should be viewed as “applications oriented”. A brief comparison will follow individual descriptions. Chemistry, The Central Science, 7th ed., by Brown, LeMay, and Bursten has a traditional chapter sequence. The most distinctive content is an excellent chapter on materials, which includes liquid crystals, polymers, and ceramics. Descriptive inorganic, organic, and biochemistry are found in the last chapters, with an “add-on” flavor. The authors state the textbook’s advantages are clear writing, scientific accuracy and currency, strong end-of-chapter problems, and concept-oriented learning. I agree with these characterizations. Clear writing has long been a strength of this book, and it certainly also includes the typical 100+ problems per chapter. There is a real feel of “being current” about this book—many features are chosen with this in mind, and recent dates are pointedly shown. Topics like taxol, atomic force microscopy, and buckyballs are examples. The content is presented clearly, with a straight science feel, and with a sense of comprehensive treatment (both common approaches to limiting reagents are fully developed). Visually, the look is rather dense, with perhaps an excess of graphics per page (a comment also made in the review of the prior edition, J. Chem. Educ. 1995, 72, A107–A108). The overly dense appearance also extends to the problem sections, which are only rarely interrupted by diagrams or other graphics. The Brown, Lemay, and Bursten text is accompanied by several ancillaries of interest. One, “Experimenting with the Internet, A Guide for Chemistry Students” by Thomas Gardner, is a nice general introduction to the Internet, answering questions like “What is FTP?” or “What is the TCP stack?” Although chemical examples are used, the book is only modestly useful. A demo of “Matter”, a CD-ROM designed to support this text was also reviewed. The CD-ROM is a lecture presentation aid only, and is not for student use. It contains figures, lab demo videos, and some animations. I found the visual quality to be marginal, with poor resolution and background colors. Finally, a WWW site is under construction for this text (http://www.prenhall.com/
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brown/), which looks like a good resource. It includes nice practice tests for student use, for example. Chemistry & Chemical Reactivity, 3rd ed., by Kotz and Treichel also has a standard chapter layout, but is organized into a nice superstructure of major topics—for example, five chapters on structure and bonding, and seven chapters on principles of reactivity (including rates, thermodynamics, equilibria). The organic chemistry chapter is in the middle of the book, after the bonding section. The stated goal of the authors is to convey the excitement of discovery within chemistry. The text does this with chemical puzzles to start and end each chapter, and also with some emphasis on the people of chemistry. My primary criterion when evaluating a text is clarity of writing, and this book meets that criterion well. The concepts are clearly stated, and the calculations are carefully presented. There is a clear emphasis on concepts, with a special section of conceptual questions in each end-of-chapter problem set. Visually, this book is clean and clear. Graphics are common, but never to the point of seeming too busy. A single ancillary was reviewed with this text, the Saunders Interactive General Chemistry CD-ROM by Kotz and Vining. The CD-ROM is an exciting, full-fledged interactive learning tool, designed for use by students. The full text of the textbook is present in PDF format, but that is the least of the content. A complete Interactive Chemistry program is included, which amounts to a fully realized multimedia presentation of General Chemistry. Rather than mimic the Kotz and Treichel text, it presents an independent interactive learning experience covering the main concepts of each chapter. While not every concept is presented, about 80% of the main ideas in each chapter are included. Animations such as depictions of the kinetic molecular theory of gases related to Boyle’s law are very effective (see and hear the change in frequency of gas molecules colliding with the container wall as the volume is decreased). Problem-solving tutorials are included, as are many interactive graphs and video demonstrations. The CD-ROM also includes CAChe Visualizer for Education, a molecular modeling program, complete with 300 predrawn structures and various visualization tools. A basic graphic utility (“Mr. Plot”) and a useful workbook for the CD-ROM are also included. Using this CD-ROM, you truly realize the power of multimedia to communicate visually and by sound. It is exciting! You also realize that the CD-ROM does not replace a printed text. Even though the full text is available on the CD-ROM, the printed version is much more usable. This CD-ROM product was clearly integrated into the textbook development project from the beginning. For an early edition, it is amazingly mature. No problems were encountered while using this edition (v. 2.2) with either Windows 95 or Windows NT, and the visual appearance is excellent. Finally, a few words of direct comparison. Overall, the Brown, LeMay, and Bursten book has a serious-science, denser feel in both content and style, while the Kotz and Treichel book is more open and approachable, more conversational. Both are solid, mainline general chemistry texts, and both comprehensively covered all the specific topics I went looking for. Both texts include about the same number of “boxed special topics”, although the Kotz and Treichel book had longer write-ups on featured scientists. I recom-
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 4 April 1997
Chemical Education Today
edited by
Edward J. Walsh Allegheny College Meadville, PA 16335
mend both texts highly, with the Saunders Interactive General Chemistry CD-ROM available at extra cost with the Kotz and Treichel book being a very successful, very useful multimedia companion for general chemistry. Jack Steehler Department of Chemistry, Roanoke College, Salem, VA 24153-3794; email:
[email protected] Introducing...
Jeffrey D. Kovac Department of Chemistry University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996 423/974-3444 Email:
[email protected] I am delighted to be able to announce the appointment of two Associate Editors for the Book/Media Review section of this Journal. They are Jeff Kovac, from the University of Tennessee, and Mike McCallum, who is in Stockton, California, at the University of the Pacific. They have both written reviews for this section and are guiding some other reviews through the process. Jeff has strong commitment to chemical education and has been writing about scientific ethics in this and other journals. He is a physical chemist with special interests in statistical mechanics and computer simulation. Mike is also a physical chemist—you see, you need two physical chemists to prop up one organic chemist—who has skills in supercomputing, an area in which he won a prize from IBM. E. J. Walsh
C. Michael McCallum Department of Chemistry University of the Pacific 3601 Pacific Avenue Stockton, CA 95211 209/946-2393 Email:
[email protected] Vol. 74 No. 4 April 1997 • Journal of Chemical Education
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