The Chemistry Maths Book

by Erich Steiner

Book Overview

The Chemistry Maths Book is a comprehensive textbook of mathematics for undergraduate students of chemistry. Such students often find themselves unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with the mathematical content of their chemistry courses. Textbooks designed to overcome this problem have so far been too basic for complete undergraduate courses and have been unpopular with students. However, this modern textbook provides a complete and up-to-date course...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198559135
• ISBN13: 9780198559139
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 9.4" x 6.6"

Customer Reviews

"The Bible"

If you are an undergraduate (or even post-grad) student in any of the physical sciences then the best book you could ever buy for getting on top of math would have to be this book. Having come from a shaky back-ground in math ( it used to be my worst subject and my pet-hate) the book laid out the theory and the knowledge requisite for most, if not all, the theory behind physical chemistry. In fact this book is better than any undergrad math text I have ever come across and it's a special treat for the chem student because he goes over things you learn without really knowing why and he reinforces things later on- he really does build on concepts so that you don't forget them a week later. He also makes the subject interesing with little anecdotes and such- but not the type you come across in your standard highschool text with a grey drawing of a dead bloke in a bedsheet. In short this book is the bible for any student wanting to do a chem major and succeed in research- it's all you know you need and all you won't know you'll need til after you've read it.

a good book to have when you're taking pchem

I initially got this book because my math skills were shaky and being a chem major, I knew that shaky math skills would not suffice. I took a calculus course and glanced through the book, but didn't really use it so much. Then I took pchem. This book was a life saver, seriously. All the math and the equations that seem to come from nowhere in pchem books are deeply explored, derived and explained in an understandable fashion. If I didn't have this book, I would have been lost with my problem sets. Many of the examples they give in this book were actually problems that we had to do for class. This book explained pchem alot better than my pchem textbook (McQuarrie) and it is not even a pchem text per se!I highly reccommend this book to anyone who is going to take pchem or needs to learn how to relate math to chemistry. This book, unlike many text books actually succeeds in relating math to chemistry and shows how math can be a tool to help solve problems. Many other chemistry text books I've seen just show you an equation and say "hey, you can use this equation to solve the particle in a box" but haven you ever wondered, why? Now I am not a theoretical type person, but I did enjoy this book becasue it explained where all these equations were coming from so that you didn't just try and memorize them and pray that the ones you did memorize would be the ones on the test. This book helped me to understand what the significance of these equations were, and how I could relate them to other problems. All in all, a very good investment.

A Must for Science and Engineering

Steiner lays out years of mathematics in a very concise easy-to-find way. If you're looking for unit conversions,basic algebraic equations, line integrals, matrices, or numerical methods, it's in there. What really makes this text so useful is that after dealing with a particular type of equation, he'll have a couple examples and practice problems (which have solutions in the back). In addition to a clear exposition of the math, Steiner does a well-balanced job of applying the math to real scientific problems in chemistry and physics. For instance, in the section dealing with implicit solutions and inverses, Steiner shows how those algebraic methods can be used on the Van der Waals equation. He doesn't overdo these problems or make the book's scope too narrow--you don't have to be a chemist to enjoy this book--but these "real world" examples really do help you make sense of math, and make this book a very useful, enjoyable resource.

Superb mathematical reference

I found this book while browsing in the science and mathematics section of a local shop. I was amazed at its completeness, considering its relatively compact size. As the previous reviewer mentioned, this book is a fabulous summary of mathematics one usually encounters over many years, but the presentation is such that this single volume is like a self-contained undergraduate applied mathematics major. The presentation is concise, and examples are well-chosen and not limited to chemistry as the title would imply. Students of all sciences and mathematics would do well to purchase this book. I find it to be a useful reference and refresher now that I have completed my degree. This book, combined with an appropriately advanced "mathematical methods" text (such as Arfken, et al), would combine in two volumes everything the applied mathematician needs in his toolkit. I'm very happy to have found this book, a truly delightful and compact mathematics vade mecum.

A fantastic summary of about 8 years worth of math

This is a truly wonderful book. It covers _everything_, from algebra to trigonometry to logarithms to calculus to advanced calculus, complex numbers, 3-dimensional functions, fourier analysis, geometry, matrices, vector algebra...... yummy. And it's not just chemistry specific either (it provides applications to advanced chemistry, but those aren't necessary to enjoy the book)The best part is, it gives proofs for _everything_. All the math equations I'd known for years but had never found proofs for I've finally found in this book -- from the definite integral to the logarithmic product rule to the vector cross product. And the book goes step by step, so if you're the type (like me) that learns by reading the actual proofs for an equation (rather than vague descriptions of equations which, we are told, "work"), you'll be able to learn a lot of new math as well as reinforce the old.If you like math........ buy it. :-)