Physical Chemistry

Some people follow this text as if it were a cult book. I used it as a reference material (because I do not major in Chemistry) for a one-semester course. I enjoyed reading the book for it was simple and straightforward, not beating around the bush - quite the sort you love when the course is not going to help you further. An excellent book - easy to read.

Well thought out presentation of material. Easy to understand and easy and fun to read.

I really can not understand the poor reviews I have read about this book. It is very well organized and Atkins makes the concepts easy to understand. It is also fun and easy to read. For example Atkins explains various details that one would find other engineering or science books skip over assuming the reader is following and understanding the various leaps in logic taken during the explaination of the topic presented. I would also like to add that I am a normal student I do not learn things super fast or easily, so understand my review comes not form a genious, but a normal average Joe like yourself.

I have read the other reviews and I believe that the students who rate this book poorly are mistaking their inability to grasp physical chemistry with a poor textbook. The textbook is excellent and any good professor can teach physical chemistry from it. It is well organized, starting with some basic thermodynamics background and moving to more complicated thermo. The next section is kinetics, which is also presented not nearly as well as the thermo, but Atkins does a good job nonetheless. Spectroscopy and statistical mechanics come next and although they are not simple to understand, Atkins is concise in his presentation. The remainder of the book is additional material which may or may not be covered in a physical chemistry course. What should also be noted are the appendices at the end. Atkins includes very helpful supplemental material in mathematics which is needed for the thermodynamics discussion. The tables are somewhat lacking, but any good reference book can supplement this information. Overall, I would say the book is well worth the money and I have yet to see another physical chemistry text which contains as much information as well presented as it is.

Atkins does an amazing job of shedding light on current theories in physical and quantum chemistry. The sections on molecular vibrational analysis rival the work of the finest authors in the field.