PRIN OF CHEM CL

by Munowitz, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780393972887
• ISBN10: 0393972887
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-07-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Read a few pages, and you'll see what all the excitement is about. Intended primarily for college freshmen, this exceptionally lucid, carefully paced, elegantly designed, well-illustrated volume will appeal to curious readers of any age who want to know more about the innermost workings of the "central science." In the words of another advance reviewer, the Munowitz book "reveals the beauty of chemistry in an unusual, graceful, narrative style. Compared with standard textbooks, it is poetic." This book is unusual in several respects. Perhaps the most obvious, at first glance, is the distinctive pattern of white and gray stripes that appear when you view its pages edge-on. The striped pattern is a superficial manifestation of a novel's internal structure. Unlike a standard chemistry textbook, in which each chapter is fragmented into a hodgepodge of disparate parts--text, boxed features, worked exercises, solved and unsolved problems, in-chapter and end-of-chapter summaries, miscellaneous decorative elements-- each chapter in Principles of Chemistry has a much simpler organization: an uninterrupted narrative core (white pages), followed by a Review and Guide to Problems section (gray pages). In short: principles first, then practice. The tutorial, problem-solving sections at the ends of the chapters amount, in effect, to a built-in study guide, thus obviating the need for a separate volume of this type. In addition, the long run of predominantly white pages at the back of the book consists, for the most part, of an unusually complete set of appendices devoted to such important matters as nomenclature, mathematics, assorted tables, and a glossary. Taken just by themselves, then, the white pages that constitute the first, narrative parts of the book's 21 chapters add up to a fairly modest-sized book-within-a-book-- at least by comparison with other texts for the introductory general chemistry course. And what a book it is! As the reviewers' comments quoted elsewhere attest, the novel intrachapter organization of the Munowitz text contributes to another of this book's distinctive features: its remarkably coherent "story line." The main driving force here, though, is the extraordinary power and clarity of the author's writing by far the most remarked-upon special attribute of this book. Just crack it open anywhere and start reading, and you'll see what all the fuss is about.

Table of Contents

PREFACE	xxiii
Introduction	1	(12)
1. Fundamental Concepts	13	(30)
2. Atoms and Molecules	43	(32)
3. Prototypical Reactions	75	(28)
4. Light and Matter--Waves and/or Particles	103	(42)
5. Quantum Theory of the Hydrogen Atom	145	(32)
6. Periodic Properties of the Elements	177	(40)
7. Covalent Bonding and Molecular Orbitals	217	(44)
8. Some Organic and Biochemical Species and Reactions	261	(36)
9. States of Matter	297	(54)
10. Macroscopic to Microscopic--Gases and Kinetic Theory	351	(42)
11. Disorder-Order and Phase Transitions	393	(42)
12. Equilibrium--The Stable State	435	(26)
13. Energy, Heat, and Chemical Change	461	(28)
14. Free Energy and the Direction of Change	489	(38)
15. Making Accommodations--Solubility and Molecular Recognition	527	(42)
16. Acids and Bases	569	(38)
17. Chemistry and Electricity	607	(36)
18. Kinetics--The Course of Chemical Reactions	643	(42)
19. Chemistry Coordinated--The Transition Metals and Their Complexes	685	(36)
20. Spectroscopy and Analysis	721	(30)
21. Worlds Within Worlds--The Nucleus and Beyond	751
APPENDIX A. Nomenclature and Vocabulary	A1	(32)
APPENDIX B. Pertinent Mathematics	A33	(26)
APPENDIX C. Data	A59	(44)
APPENDIX D. Glossary	A103	(80)
ANSWERS TO SELECTED EXERCISES	A183	(16)
CREDITS	A199	(2)
INDEX	A201