Addison-Wesley Chemistry
Oddly, there is no foreword, preface or introduction in this
book, nor is there any information that might identify the
book's intended audience. But the book's style and scope (along
with its list of high-school teachers who are shown as "Content
Reviewers") make clear that this is a chemistry book for
high-school students.
Most of Addison-Wesley Chemistry is devoted to inorganic
chemistry, but some introductory organic chemistry appears in two
chapters near the end. There are 26 chapters in all -- and
while they are not grouped into units, they present the major
topics of high-school chemistry in an acceptable sequence:
matter and its properties, scientific measurement,
problem-solving tactics, atomic structure, chemical formulas, molar
quantification, reactions, stoichiometry, the states of matter,
thermochemistry, the gas laws, electron states, the periodic
table, ionic bonds, covalent bonds, aqueous systems, solutions,
reaction rates, acids and bases, neutralization, redox reactions,
electrochemistry, metals, hydrocarbons, organic functional
groups, and nuclear chemistry. In many instances, a given
chapter builds on material in the chapters that have preceded it,
and every chapter includes a little experiment (labeled as an
"Activity") that seems appropriate for a high-school class.
In compliance with some current fads, the opening spread of each
chapter has a list of goals and one of those concept maps that
now seem to be ubiquitous in schoolbooks. Within the chapter,
each section has an "Objective" that is announced in a
margin-note. In fact, virtually every page in the book has at least one
item in the margin -- an "Objective" note, a problem-solving tip,
a biographical sketch, a picture, a safety tip, or something
else. As abundant as they are, however, these items generally
do not disrupt lessons or impede the reader's effort to follow
the main text.
Questions, problems and exercises are abundant too -- 70 to 90 of
them in a typical chapter. Some are placed within or beside the
main text, but most are presented in the end-of-chapter review.
The review usually includes some "Connections Questions" and
"Write About Chemistry" exercises which require the student to
compose paragraphs, or even short essays, that involve some
knowledge of chemistry.
Throughout the book, the illustrations are excellent. The charts
and diagrams are clear and well captioned, chemical structures
are depicted nicely, and the photographs are universally helpful
and pertinent to the topics at hand. I couldn't find a dumb
illustration in the entire book. (I wish, however, that the
photo on page 372, showing two crystals of halite, had a better
caption: The existing caption can lead the reader to think, at
first, that the photo shows an aerial view of two salt domes near
the Gulf of Mexico.)
Another of this book's strong points is the glossary. In
examining it, I found only one important fault: Though the
Brønsted-Lowry theory of acids is discussed on page 550 of the
text, there is no mention of that theory (or of Brønsted or of
Lowry) in the glossary.
There are many peripheral inserts that attempt to expand on
lessons in the text or try to relate chemistry to other
endeavors. Most of the inserts take the form of sidebars,
placed under such headings as "Consumer Chemistry,"
"Environmental Awareness," "Historical Notebook," "Science,
Technology, and Society," "Materials Science," "Integrating Other
Fields" and "Chemistry in Careers." Some of them can contribute
to a student's appreciation of chemistry, but others --
especially the "Environmental Awareness" items -- aren't helpful
and may even spread misconceptions.
Addison-Wesley's willingness to pander to the agents of political
correctness is signaled at the very start of Addison-Wesley
Chemistry, in the lists of people who allegedly put this book
together. Only nine people are listed as "Content Reviewers,"
but eight others -- eight! -- are shown as "Multicultural
Graphics Reviewers" and "Multicultural Content Reviewers."
Given a line-up like that, we perhaps should be thankful that the
book doesn't have any tales about the Eskimos' contributions to
the theory of orbitals, or the Kalahari Bushmen's discovery of
the gas laws. But what the book does have is bad enough -- e.g.,
the "Historical Notebook" article on page 118, which supposedly
tells about the development of pharmacology. Here the writers
fail to provide any useful information about chemistry, but they
produce distorted, misleading and potentially dangerous claims
about "Chinese pharmacists." [See "Tigers, Toads and Tricks"]
For an example of how the writers brandish fashionable
environmental topics, turn to the "Environmental Awareness"
article on page 144. Here the writers say that lead in paint
"continues to be a serious indoor environmental concern" -- and
then, in an evasive and convoluted discussion that is devoid of
chemistry, they imply (but never establish) that lead-bearing
paints represent a danger to health. This variety of
fear-mongering is common in the popular media, but we must demand much
better in a science textbook. The writers of a science textbook
should reject media-driven alarmism and should examine, through a
presentation of evidence, the question of whether citizens really
face some risk of harm from lead-based paints on the walls of
their houses. If textbook-writers can't do this, and can't
resist indulging in sensationalism, then they should write
nothing at all.
The "Environmental Awareness" article on page 717, headlined
"Transporting Chemicals," purports to tell about "hazardous
materials." The term "hazardous" is never defined, however. If
it were, students would learn that "hazard," unlike toxicity,
isn't an inherent property of a material. Hazard depends
entirely on how humans handle the material in question; some ways
of handling or using a given material may be notably dangerous,
while other ways may be quite innocuous. Students should also
learn that a chemical is said to be "hazardous" only because some
politicians or bureaucrats have decided that it should be so
labeled. Here we have another example of how political fancies
can make chemicals look sinister. Instead of explaining these
points, Addison-Wesley's writers offer the meaningless statement
that "In a recent survey of environmental policies, state
legislators placed transportation of hazardous materials at the
top of their list of concerns" -- as if the opinions of
politicians had something to do with reality or could somehow
promote an understanding of chemistry.
Having said all that, I have to tell that there isn't as much
fashionable nonsense in Addison-Wesley Chemistry as in some other
high-school books. Moreover, the Addison-Wesley writers have
isolated their weird "issues" and their other trendy diversions
and derangements in sidebars or separate articles, instead of
working them into the main text. Teachers, therefore, can easily
direct their students to skip over these extraneous items and
stick to the book's good instruction in chemistry.
In the 1997 version of Addison-Wesley Chemistry (the "Expanded
Fourth Edition"), chemistry is presented in a fairly conservative
way that resonates with what we are seeing in the emerging state
standards. I have found this book's conventional approach to be
somewhat refreshing, after my efforts to follow the convoluted
presentations in the Holt and the Kendall/Hunt texts.
This is not to say that Addison-Wesley Chemistry lacks attempts
to make chemistry relevant by linking it to societal problems or
to our daily lives. The 1997 version is some 100 pages longer
than the 1990 version (on which I commented in The Textbook
Letter for January-February 1995), and much of the added space is
occupied by what Addison-Wesley calls "Special Features." These
include full-page articles labeled "Consumer Chemistry,"
"Science, Technology, and Society," "Environmental Awareness" and
so forth, as well as 50 shorter sidebars devoted to "integrating"
chemistry with other fields. We will first examine some of the
"Special Features," before we look at the main text:
Now let's turn to the main text.
Like the 1990 version, this 1997 version of Addison-Wesley
Chemistry has good discussions of conversion factors and
dimensional analysis, but the material about the Celsius and
Kelvin scales is awfully outdated. The writers still seem to be
unaware that the relation between those two scales was redefined
in 1968. (See my review in The Textbook Letter,
November-December 1996.)
The discussion of atomic structure is very similar to the
corresponding part of the 1990 book. In the chapter "Reaction
Rates and Equilibrium," the writers have deleted a misconception
about standard entropy, but they are still talking naively about
the concept that a system behaves in a way which causes entropy
to be maximized. They don't explain that this applies only to an
isolated system -- a system whose total energy remains constant.
Their discussion of free energy is naive, too. They refuse to
state that free energy dictates the direction of a chemical
reaction only if the temperature and the pressure are constant.
Errors like these are common when textbook-writers tackle a
rigorous subject without really understanding all the rigor that
is involved.
In the 1997 book, most chapters include problems which are said
to require the use of a graphing calculators. These calculators,
which allow students to generate visual representations of
mathematical functions, are revolutionizing the teaching of
calculus, and Addison-Wesley's writers seem to think that a
similar revolution may be affecting the teaching of high-school
chemistry. In Appendix D of the 1997 book there are eleven pages
of instructions for operating the TI-82 calculator (sold by Texas
Instruments), and Appendix E gives keystroke-by-keystroke
solutions to some of the graphing-calculator problems in the
book's early chapters.
All of that may seem impressive, but few of the
graphing-calculator problems are worth taking seriously. The one that
involves the kinetics of a decomposition (page 533) has merit,
but most of the others do not. Typically, the student is just
determining a slope that might better be found by simply
dividing each y value by each x value. Sometimes it seems that
the student is plotting something just for the fun of it, with no
science involved. While graphing calculators can play a small
role in high-school chemistry instruction, but most of the
graphing problems in Addison-Wesley Chemistry are just needless
button-pushing. If an instructor really wants to show students
how science is done, the instructor should teach them do math in
their heads, using approximations to find crude numerical
answers. If approximations give a foolish answer, then the
student has made a conceptual mistake. Using a calculator won't
correct that.
There are some nice historical items in this book, even if the
"Pharmacy" article isn't one of them. Unlike some other texts
that I have seen recently, this one doesn't give the impression
that science just came out of nowhere.
Looking through the book's index, we find some notable gaps. For
example, there is an entry for lead poisoning but none for
mercury poisoning; and although the book purports to promote
"Environmental Awareness," the index doesn't mention dioxins or
DDT or Chernobyl. Unfortunately it does mention "dessicants" --
but in the book's text, desiccants is spelled correctly.
If one is seeking a rather conventional text that may survive
the introduction of new science-education standards, the 1997
version of Addison-Wesley Chemistry seems to be a reasonable
choice. This book's greatest weakness lies in its inaccurate
treatment of some basic physical principles, as illustrated by its
faulty presentation of chemical thermodynamics.
Rollie J. Myers is a physical chemist, a specialist in
spectroscopy, and a professor of chemistry, emeritus, at the
University of California at Berkeley. He has taught introductory
chemistry at that institution and has directed summer programs
for high-school chemistry teachers.
Max Rodel is a consulting environmental chemist and a registered
environmental assessor in state of California. His major
professional interest is the chemistry of natural aquatic
systems, including the fates of pollutants. He lives and works
in Mill Valley, and he regularly reviews chemistry texts and
environmental-science texts for The Textbook Letter.
Reviewing a high-school book in chemistry
1997. 882 pages. ISBN of the student's edition: 0-201-46652-X.
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 2725 Sand Hill Road,
Menlo Park, California 94025.
If You Adopt This Good Text,
Ignore Its Trendy DiversionsMax G. Rodel
Addison-Wesley Chemistry is one of the better choices for a basic
high-school course in inorganic chemistry. It is well organized
and well written, and its pages are copiously illustrated but not
garish. Many of today's schoolbooks are loaded up with gaudy,
flamboyant artwork that makes them look like on-line instruction
manuals for video games, but Addison-Wesley Chemistry is not one
of those.
The Book's Major Failing
Recommendation
A Rather Conventional Book
with Room for ImprovementRollie J. Myers
The last two chemistry books that I reviewed in these pages --
Holt's Chemistry: Visualizing Matter and Kendall/Hunt's
ChemCom -- were trendy, unconventional books that devoted much space to
subjects lying beyond the classical view of chemistry. That
approach has been popular in recent years, but its days may be
numbered because many states are now developing rigorous
science-education standards that stress traditional chemistry -- not
cultural anecdotes, entertaining stories, role-playing, societal
problems or the three R's (reduce, reuse and recycle). I
suspect that many educators will soon be leaning toward books
which focus strongly on traditional chemistry while retaining
some selective coverage of societal issues that involve chemical
science or technology.
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