general

I found this book to be very easy to read and follow. There are lots of pictures, diagrams, graphs, and tables which aide in understandin the text. There are review sections and questions at the end of every chapter so it is easy to tell if you have learned the material or not, plus you get plenty of practice. It covers all the basic advanced highschool chemistry and is a great book to go through before freshmen level chemistry in college. Overall this book is an excellent learning tool weather you are using it in a class or just using it for a reference for upper level chemistry classes.

This text is widely used and has helped many students to understand chemistry. The sequence of topics presented is traditional. It has a good chapter on modern materials. The dual-column format of examples clearly shows problem solving strategies.

This, and all other similar textbooks, are written for studnents who have appropriate background in high school sciences and reasonable reading comprehension. It is not fair to compare this book with a teacher whom you can talk face to face. Considering the poor reading skills of today's college students, most of whom have hard time with any materals written at 8th grade readability level and do have no idea on how to read and use a textbook, it is impossible for any textbook to do the magic of enlightening them.

The companion website of this text has thousands of problems available for practice, much more than most other similar textbook websites. Learning chemistry is like learning how to play tennis. You can't expect to learn how to play tennis by watching tennis matches on TV. Similarly, you can't expect to learn chemistry by simply reading the textbook or watching your professors solve problems in class. You have to practice. If this is the text you are using, take advantage of this good resource. Students using other texts are not as lucky as you are.

For a slightly more engaging text, see the one by Moore, Stanitski and Jurs.

I am a teacher using this book for an AP Chem class. I have found the book very difficult to use. Topics are rather disconnected and most of my students had trouble following the logic of more difficult subjects. The early chapters are particularly difficult. I have also found numerous mistakes with the materials available to teachers. The number of errors on the power point presentations are ridiculous. I also questions some of the answers with regards to the use of significant fiqures.

The Web Site is excellent even though I only use the standard version and not the electronic chapters. The solution manual is so-so. Sometimes shortcuts are used without explanation which is dangerous for AP students.

I would not recommend this book for use in the high school classroom from the point of view of both the teacher using the books and materials and the student attempting to learn from the book.