Chemical Education Today
book & media reviews Physical Chemistry Using Mathcad Joseph H. Noggle. Pike Creek: Newark, DE, 1997. ISBN 0-9655849-0-9. $20.00. Nobody knows how physical chemistry will be taught and learned in 2010 CE. In view of the rate at which computers, computer software, and the internet are advancing, it might be very different from the way we do it today. In my vision of an ideal future, all physical chemistry students will carry a laptop with cellular phone connection to the World Wide Web. And they will use a future generation of Mathcad for solving problems and interpreting mathematical models. Joseph Noggle has now written a book to lead us all in that direction. Noggle shows how we can use Mathcad while learning the often difficult concepts in physical chemistry. Graphing is perhaps the best tool for grasping relationships between the variables in physical problems: pressure versus volume (as in the van der Waals equation), concentration versus time (as in reaction rate processes), and wave function versus position (as in atomic orbitals). Mathcad’s tools for creating 2- and 3-dimensional plots are easy to use and Noggle’s book illustrates them for many physical chemistry problems. He also shows how to use the elementary builtin Mathcad functions for algebra, calculus, and statistics. A few advanced applications are included—for example, us-
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ing the rkfixed function to solve systems of coupled differential equations arising from composite reaction rate mechanisms. This book is well written. I find the instructions for using Mathcad easy to follow, and the illustrative examples provide a representative sampling of physical chemistry problems. The book is a good guide for chemistry students to learn to use Mathcad for solving problems and clarifying new concepts. Problems at the ends of chapters reinforce concepts learned in these chapters. On the whole, this book has a good balance of easy and difficult problems and prepares the reader to proceed independently into advanced methods. Whether you are a teacher or a student, this book is an excellent introduction to Mathcad and the way science might be taught and learned in the next century. Teachers will find it a helpful supplement to contemporary physical chemistry texts, and it will give students some powerful tools for solving physical chemistry problems more easily and reliably. Most of all, Noggle has shown how Mathcad and similar computer tools will change the way physical chemistry will be taught in the near future.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 8 August 1997
Ronald D. Poshusta Department of Chemistry Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4630
