The Student Room Group

A Good Chemistry Text Book

Right well at the moment I have this book called "Chemistry In Context" by Graham Hill and ohn Holman 5th Edition and its a college text book and it sucks. It over complicates things and its annoying to site down and read. I was wondering what other fellow IB Chemistry HL students are using at the moment? I know about the Oxford Study Guide and its a great little book but i want to have also something bigger, with examples and it goes into the subject a little bit more. So if you could please post in the order

Name of Book, Author, and ISBN


it would really help me and seeing as I only have 5months left could you make your post sooner rather than later thanks ever so much!
Reply 1
Well, I think that it doesn't really matter which book you use. You probably thought about Chemistry for IB. This one is good as it covers the sylabus, but does not have more examples. We use a book Chemistry for A-levels. It's quite good, but none is perfect. One really Author for inorganic Chemistry is Atkins Peter, but he writes just about inorganic chemistry.
Reply 2
tamala
Well, I think that it doesn't really matter which book you use. You probably thought about Chemistry for IB. This one is good as it covers the sylabus, but does not have more examples. We use a book Chemistry for A-levels. It's quite good, but none is perfect. One really Author for inorganic Chemistry is Atkins Peter, but he writes just about inorganic chemistry.


Peter Atkins is actually a physical chemist - I think he is most famous for his 'Physical Chemistry' book, which is really THE reference book for physical chemistry (said the first organic lecturer ...). Unfortunately I should probably be more familiar with it than I am what with Collections ... next week!! (Hadn't realised it was so soon! Had best go study now ...)

The book I used for IB chemistry is an American university textbook,
James E Brady, General Chemistry: Principles & Structure, ISBN 0471621315.
It's OK I suppose. It's written for Americans, so it's very understandable and doesn't assume too much prior knowledge (I LOVE American textbooks!). But it doesn't go quite deep enough in some topics, and it doesn't have any organic or biological chemistry (which you may or may not need depending on your options). Then there are some topics which you won't need, of course.

Of course Geoff Neuss's Chemistry for the IB Diploma, ISBN 0-19-914807-4, is a jolly good book - I don't know if this is what you meant by the study guide - there seems to be another set of such books, though I'm not sure if from Oxford -, but this one is written exactly for the IB syllabus. It doesn't do much of explaining though, so it's best used for revision only.

But overall I found that we did much more in class than was in the syllabus, and the topics were covered very clearly and understandably, so maybe you don't need any books at all? Or don't you feel your class notes are good enough?


Also, from some document on the web:
Notes from IB chemistry session October 27, 2005
Exchange of information on resources:
ISBN numbers for some of the materials were exchanged. It was noted that there is a fair discussion on the OCC site related to appropriate and useful books for the course. Most teachers using the John Green/Sadru Damji (ISBN 1-876659-41-6) felt that it was one of the easier texts to use as it closely followed the syllabus. Another workbook/study guide, Chemistry for the IB Diploma by Geoff Neuss (ISBN 0-19-914807-4) was said to be particularly helpful as it used expected terminology, diagrams, and reactions. Other commonly used/suggested materials include Vernier sensors and probes, the Vernier Chemistry with Computers lab manual, spec 20, and the Flinn polymer kit.
Reply 3
Actually,
The best CHEMISTRY book dedicacted to IB itself is Chemistry for the International Baccalaureate by the Oxford University Press...Im really lazy right now so just type in IB Chemistry Oxford in google and it should be the first hit you get...Im telling you all ORDER THIS BOOK...by teacher went to the IB confrence in Canada and they pretty much agreed that this was one of the best books you could get...its really good im tellin you all
Reply 4
haha my Chemistry teacher hates the book for some reason..dont know why..
Reply 5
Sinuhe
Peter Atkins is actually a physical chemist


This is true, but the majority of the books I found in different libraries are written by him together with some other authors and they cover all inorganic chemistry. And one actually also covers also organic Chemistry, I think it's called Cehmistry: principles (and something, I can't remember). This is one of best Chemistry books I've seen.
Reply 7
the book that we are using is the seventh edition of "chemisty" by raymond chang. and believe me, it is great! half of our class is surviving only because of this book. i don't know the isbn or whatever that is...
The one written by Raymond Chang is good, but too deep for IB ..
Reply 10
well... true, but a person can skip some parts...right? and chang is good if even ib book cannot explain the topics
Reply 11
In my school we use Chemistry - for use with the International Baccalaureate by John Green and Sadru Damji. The publisher is IBID Press (an Australian publisher). It's very comprehensive and thick! Lots of exercises and explains things pretty well. HL and SL stuff are clearly labelled. Also includes the options. Quite expensive though...think it cost about GBP30 when ordered in bulk. It's like GBP50 on Amazon.co.uk. ISBN is 1876659416

Here are the websites:
Amazon - http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1876659416/qid=1140199214/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-6619663-6182228
IBID Press - http://www.ibid.com.au/ibid/web.nsf/productlookup/8?opendocument

The study guide from OUP is also good - but only use it as a study guide!
Reply 12
We are using the third edition of the IBID Chemistry book; and it really sucks! Many of the explanations are too vague and formulated in such a way that it is impossible to understand. Mind that, the book also contains numerous mistakes. I recently bought Chang's book, which definately is much too detailed for IB, but probably the best I found up untill now.