ISBN0716787598

I too agree with them, I am a pchem student, and the binding on my book is coming off, I need to tape it in order to save it from falling off. Yes, the derivation are hard to follow, my professor had to give hand outs on majority of them to show what steps were skipped.

That is the worst physical chemistry textbook I've ever seen, though I haven't seen too many. To not go into deep detail this is about the material presentation. The choices that the authors made on what to tell and what not to tell as well as what to say about some concepts and issues are against the goal of good understanding and memorizing.

The new edition has colored pictures and "Impact On" sections which is very good, but I can not be silent about the thing that I cannot imagine could come to someone's head: the was an attempt to convert as many units as possible to SI all over the book. Like, it says "dm^3 (decimeter cubed)" everywhere where it would say "l (liter)" in 7th edition.
The atomic energies are expressed in attojoules. Good thing they haven't completely removed the electronvoltes, but it's not that easy to find them now.

The only reason to buy this book is when you have no other choice.

As with other editions of Atkins' P-Chem (I own 4th, 5th, & 7th), the topics are covered rigorously and at a level that I think is appropriate for a solid junior undergrad course in P-chem.

For a text that keeps up quite admirably with advancements in science, the diagrams and ancillaries (e.g., living graphs) continue to be weak and well behind the pedagogical innovations that make p-chem more accessible to students.

The quality of the binding is unacceptably poor. Like others on this page, I too have a copy of the text with the cover that has come apart. Freeman ought to republish the text with improved binding. This text should serve as a reference for students to use for many years to come. It absolutely cannot serve that function with the quality of the binding in this version.

For all the money you're paying for this book, you'd think that de Paula and Atkins could hire someone to actually READ the thing before it was published. There's at least one typo on nearly every page (and more on others). Some of these errors are innocuous, but others completely obfuscate what the authors are trying to say. To make things more of a mess, the examples and mathematical derivations often gloss over several key points that make it difficult for students to follow. And don't even get me started on the problems, which make use of magical values that are nowhere to be found in the book. The solutions are even worse - it's as if the authors mixed up the numbers of the problems in the 7th edition without bothering to update the corresponding solutions.

The representation of units is questionable at best. Who uses dm^3 instead of L as their de facto unit of volume? The authors take their cockamamie unit scheme one step further by representing all numerical values as unitless entities. For example, instead of R = 8.31 (J / mol * K), they'll divide both sides by the units and depict it as R / (J / mol * K) = 298. This baffling treatment of units is unnecessary, inconsistent, and, worst of all, distracting from the material at hand.

In a word, terrible. Since this is my first physical chemistry course I have no frame of reference for judging the content (which is decent, as far as I can tell), but the presentation is awful. If you MUST get this book for a class, look for the International edition - the only difference is that the images in the International edition aren't in color. Take the money you save and purchase a separate book that actually presents the material clearly.

This book was a required text for the physical chemistry college course. To start there are many misprints or typo on several rate constants for the given equation: PV=nRT. The form in which the units are represented can be misleading and at times confusing. Compared to the 7th Edition it is more difficult to answer the exercises and problems at the end of each chapter. Most of the time one must assume ideal gas behavior to answer the questions, however, the instructions do not advise or inform the student they must assume ideal behavior in order to correctly solve the problems or exercises. The only saving grace is obtaining the students solution mannual!