Slashdot Mirror
Chemistry Books for the Smart?
enzyme asks: "A couple of weeks back,
chrisd asked for
recommendations on computer books. This made we wonder: What are the great chemistry books? I want to know what books the chemistry geeks recommend! What are good books on chemistry - textbooks, popular science...whatever! Anything that an intelligent person without a PhD in chemistry can comprehend. What can I read to help me understand chemistry - my old chemistry textbooks don't really do this."
"Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" or "Dating for Dummies"? You might want to try renting "The Ladies Man" as well.
This is the only guide to chemistry the layman needs.
I have been pwned because my
To gain "understanding" take the sciences in order.
1. Physics
2. Chemistry
3. Biology
Think of it this way:
Without physics, there can be no chemistry. Without chemistry, there is no biology
Well, since chemistry is ultimately just QED (Quantum Electrodynamics), it'd probably be best to read up on Quantum Mechanics first, for completeness. And it's cool too.
;-)
Good PopSci QM books are:
1. QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman
2. In Search of Schrodinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality by John Gribbin
3. Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality: Solving the Quantum Mysteries by John Gribbin
4. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
More advanced QM books if you are willing to get into it:
1. Principles of Quantum Mechanics by Ramamurti Shankar
2. The Feynman Lectures (really just concentrate on vol. 3)
3. Quantum Mechanics (2 vol.) by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Bernard Diu, Frank Laloe, and Bernard Dui
I'll leave it to my chemistry friends to fill in the rest from QED on
"This statement is false."
Assumming that you are also interested in computers (based on the fact that this is a Slashdot post):
"Computer Simulation of Liquids" by M. P. Allen, D. J. Tildesley (1997), Oxford University Press; ISBN: 0198553757
It is a bit tricky to get hold of because it is out of print, but it is the only undergraduate chemistry textbook worth its shelfspace.
With respect to understanding chemistry, what aspects interest you? Phys Chem, Organic, Bio, Inorganic, Theoretical? Understanding one won't necessarily help you understand the others. I've been studying chemistry for 10 years now, and I've given up trying to understand much of it...
I read these books as a 9 year old, did all the experiements, and to this day, I still find myself reciting basic principles from them to my colleagues in hospitals, molecular biology labs and other technical settings [a college degree in a related science doesn't fill in all the gaps of a practical understanding of the day-to-day world. An early exposure grounds you in the basics, and gets you seeing/thinking about things in chemical terms]
The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments (Robert Brent, 1960) (not any of the many variant titles) is head and shoulders above any other chemistry book I'd give a bright grade schooler. I hunted down a copy for my own kids, and they loved it.
Chemical Magic (forgot the authors) is one of the best of the many "cool effects to impress your friends" books out there.
Add a good grounding in stoichiometry, energies, entropy, electronegativity, and a few other basic
things, and there's no telling how far it'll take them. I got thrown out of Chemistry in the first month of class (incompetent teacher wanted "her' answers on tests, not the correct ones) and took the Chemistry ACHs with no formal chemistry coursework. I got a 770 out of 800 (top 1%, beating all the advanced chem seniors at our school) and ended up placing out of a year of college chem, simply on the basis of having my eyes opened early. I ended up getting doctorates in Molecular Bio (which is largely chemistry) and Medicine, so those books must not have led me too far astray.
What part of chemistry is it you want to understand?
Once you learn a set of patterns, and get a feel for them (like the relations in the periodic table, or the way the properties of organics change as the carbon backbone changes length) it becomes easier to learn new ones. But if you haven't got an objective in mind, it's difficult to understand why it is worth the effort.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
While I suspect the parent was posted mostly in jest, I think there's actually a lot of truth there.
The 'patterns' in chemistry, more so then in any other intro-level science, are buried three or four layers deep, in ways that no approximation can save. To truly understand chemistry requires immense amounts of quantum mechanics and other physics-layer things. Only once these things are understood deeply can chemistry be "derived".
This is in amazingly stark contrast to Physics, where we can teach people "Newtonian physics" and while it's an approximation, it's a good one for most people. Or math, where we don't all start on elliptic equations.
"Chemistry" is like that; it's like trying to start with elliptic equations, or quantum mechanics, or going straight to the moon instead of building up to it. As a result, it's all memorization, rules of thumb, exceptions to the rules of thumb, exceptions to the exceptions to the exceptions, and then another large mass of memorization, repeat ad naseum. It's actually to the point where I'm not convinced a whole lot of time should be spent on it in high school or college for non-majors, as unlike physics, very little of chemistry will help you understand the real world, except for the fact that it exists and a few basics. (Unless of course you're going to study it. In which case if you know it's a for-majors-only course, I think it might be possible to organize it much better.)
Try looking at it backwards. Don't look for the interesting parts of chemistry in physics, rather look for the interesting parts of physics in chemistry. Poring over and memorizing periodical tables and reaction charts may give you an understanding of how chemistry works, but even the broadest concepts of the underlying physics can give you a better appreciation of why it works.
Therein lies the path to deeper understanding of chemistry, Grasshopper. [grin]
It's kind of like the OSI layering standard.
This message is displayed on your browser after:
Each layer building on the other to make itself understood. A thorough grounding in mathematics gives you the basics for delving into physics. Even the most elementary physics can give you a deeper understanding of chemistry, as can an understanding of chemistry give you a deeper appreciation for the intricacies of biology (although my heart goes out to you when you have to deal with the details of organic chem [grin])