A Self-Teaching Guide - Concepts and Problems

Excelent. The method of asking you questions right after you read a paragragh works very well.You might still need more in-depth treatments of the subject from traditional text books depending on your needs, but overall the book gives you a clear introduction/brush-up to basic chemistry.

I received this book and was very skeptical that Chemistry could truly be self-taught. I was amazed at how quickly I was flying through the chapters. There are so many great things about this book. Each chapter is divided into numbered segments. There are self-check questions for each segment. You can quickly test yourself on whether you grasp the concept before moving on. Then at the end of each chapter is a quiz. Each question has the segment in which the question correlates to. If you get the question wrong, you can easily go back and referrence why. The book uses great analogies for things like electron configurations, etc. which makes all the concepts easy to understand. The book is organized in a logical method and is easy to follow and progress from concept to concept. I had bought other Chemistry books and this one is by far the best one suited for me.

Useful information for someone who had chemistry 37 years ago and now taking it again. The information was pretty clear and the actual problems are easy to work. I got this book along with another one, and my "fears" were resolved before I even started the class.

As a teacher myself (but one who knows nothing about chemistry), I must comment on this excellent book. It is clear, organized, and well-written. The authors have taken a difficult subject and made it understandable. I feel as though I am much better prepared for the college chemistry course I'll be taking in a few months - and I even think I will enjoy it! Thank you for this great little book!

Your book has inspired me in succeeding in chemistry.. I just received the book recently and already enjoy how it is written and how easy the material is put.. I use this book analogous w lecture, and textbook readings and this system is making my chemistry background rather stronger..thank you

I needed to review/learn chemistry after being out of school for a long time as a prerequisite for Nursing training. This book is wonderful. Concepts are clearly presented. The programmed format reinforces knowledge immediately. This is the best bopok that I've found to learn the basic concepts of chemistry.

After taking so many chemistry classes to prepare myself for med school I decided to just refresh my memory! The content inside is very helpful and useful but what I didn't like was that the answers and RIGHT UNDER the question. What good is having a practice book when the answer is RIGHT UNDER it!? I advise you to buy with caution if you're one to just look right at the answer and say, "Oh I knew that." because it won't help you learn.

Does a great job when building your basics of chemistry. the structure of concept followed by question and answer works for great understanding the problem. I highly recommend for everybody who needs to learn chemistry from the beginning.

This text helped me study for the Praxis teacher certification test in Chemistry in March 2007. It is a solid text with a question-and-answer format. It's most recent copyright is 1996, but for basics it truly scores.

This was a very helpful book that introduced me to the concepts and facts about chemistry. I am a newly High School graduate that will be attending college in the fall. I did not take any chemistry, neither did I take science for my senior year. This has helped me prep for science material and start my degree in Nursing!

I realize that to understand the world, I need to understand something about chemistry. (My grandfather, by the way, is a retired research chemist with several patents for plastics to his name. My father is a mechanical engineer. I inherited the 'artist' genes but I still feel curious about the world.) What is missing from this book -- amazingly so -- is a conceptual introduction to chemistry. What is it? How should we understand the organization of the periodic table? What are chemical compounds? How is a chemical change different from a physical one? And so on. (If I knew all the questions to ask, I'd probably have the answers!) I have studied ancient Greek and so I know that you can dive right in or you can give some sense of the principles of the language, the nature of the language, and the way the language is organized (which is very different from English). As you do this, you discuss the nuts and bolts (these need not be opposed aims). But I feel that in this book we dive into analysis of specifics without having a grasp of what the whole thing means. This is a book that treats chemistry, overwhemingly, as a mathematical subject. It doesn't seem to treat it as a real-world, in-your-life subject. I suppose that's fine, if you're looking for a highly abstract or mathematical treatment. But I find it disappointing because it's so partial and because it doesn't answer the 'what is it?' question.

I was failing BIO in college classes and it brought my grade up to a B!! It helped me understand Biology a lot. There's a lot of helpful topics throughout the book as well! Also, great paper. Gel pens do not bleed through nor markers!

THIS IS A HELPFUL BOOK. BUT THE TOPICS COVERED ARE REALLY MINIMAL IN NUMBER. NOT THE WHOLE GENERAL CHEMISTRY TOPICS ARE COVERED IN THIS BOOK WHICH I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE. BUT THE TOPICS COVERED< HAVE BEEN DONE NICELY.

I got this for my daughter who is taking chemistry. It's not much use when the answers are written at the end of each problem. Would it have been so difficult to put the answers at the end of each chapter or in the back of the book?

THIS IS A HELPFUL BOOK. BUT THE TOPICS COVERED ARE REALLY MINIMAL IN NUMBER. NOT THE WHOLE GENERAL CHEMISTRY TOPICS ARE COVERED IN THIS BOOK WHICH I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE. BUT THE TOPICS COVERED< HAVE BEEN DONE NICELY.

I got this for my daughter who is taking chemistry. It's not much use when the answers are written at the end of each problem. Would it have been so difficult to put the answers at the end of each chapter or in the back of the book?

I was trying to find a decent introductory book on chemistry as a refresher. Textbooks go for $150 these days, and this looked like a good choice. Be aware that it has very little explanation in it. It is primarily lists of questions with the correct answer displayed under the question. Not helpful at all for someone who has never had a chemistry course, and it is certainly not a self-teaching guide.

Had this book been named and described accurately, I would not have bought it and would not have given it a rating of one star.

I was actually ripped off on this book. The person that sold it to me had a sticker on it for $2.00, but sold it to me for more than that. Urgh! At any rate, I didn't learn much from this book. It only touched very little on some concepts and yet skipping over others. For instance, dimensional analysis is huge in Chemistry, yet this book only dedicate half a page to learning how to do dimensional analysis. It didn't even go over Thermochemistry which you will encounter in Gen. Chem 1. It is only minutely helpful. Go with another book to get a better understanding. Luckily, I had an instructor who would pass out a sheet of problems, then worked the problems for you on the board and then gave a test over quiz over very similar problems, otherwise, I would have failed the class even using this book,

She fell behind in her 9th grade chemistry class and they did not see to have a text. This did not cover all the concepts that she was covering. The explanations were lame. I have a degree in chemistry.