Conceptual Chemistry- Understanding Our World of Atoms and Molecules- Second Edition Description:

Conceptual Chemistry: Understanding Our World of Atoms and Molecules, Second Edition review:
2 stars (Conceptual Cemistry text review) - Well, it looks like I'm giving yet another one of my college textbooks a less than stellar review. This particular book was the required text for Chemistry 1010 at my college. Extremely expensive is how I feel about this book, since unlike my intro Psych book, which cost just as much, I find this one to be both confusing and patronizing. I had a slave driver for a Honors Chem teacher in high school, so I expected Chemistry to be easy, since I later found out that in high school I had taken the equivalent of a Chemistry class required of college level Chemistry majors. My professor was fairly good. He made it a point of explaining all the math and all the other mumbo-jumbo in this text. He had to do that a lot. Why, you ask? Because, this book, I swear, was written for a sixth grader. It comes across as such, especially in the first few chapters, where they talk about atoms and molarity, elements and compounds. It isn't until the later chapters, when you get to learn about things I still cannot even spell, that the author finally becomes serious. But still, the weird jokes about the neutron who went to the bar, the pictures of the author's wife and family members strewn about, and the corny cartoon characters trying to make Chemistry equations "fun" are just that-sappy and VERY corny. I had to repeatedly look at the cover of the book to make sure I was not reading a child's Chemistry text. And, come the day of the final, most of my classmates are more than willing to get rid of this text, which for most of us has served us well as a paperweight. I didn't even get to use it for that-my roommate is a Chemistry major and had an even bigger Chemistry book to use for that purpose. I spent $102 on this thing that masquerades as a college level Chemistry text, but in reality reads like it was meant for an uneducated 12 year old. The vast majority of us in this class did not use this book. We had a fairly decent professor whose lectures proved far more useful than this text, althought his tests were quite confusing. This book has no real purpose. Save your money and look for the copy on reserve at the library. It is better than being reminded that in the scope of the author, that you are not worthy of being treated like a college level adult because you did not take the intro Chemistry class aimed at Chem majors. This book is horrible, and the worst part is that I only got $45 back for it at textbook buyback this last week. Ugh.