Chemistry: The Central Science, 14th edition

Published by Pearson (January 4, 2017) © 2018

  • Theodore E. Brown Emeritus) University of Illinois
  • H Eugene LeMay University of Nevada, Reno
  • Bruce E. Bursten Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Catherine Murphy University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Patrick Woodward The Ohio State University
  • Matthew E. Stoltzfus The Ohio State University

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For courses in 2-semester general chemistry.

A robust digital experience built for student success

Chemistry: The Central Science approaches general chemistry with unrivaled problem sets, notable scientific accuracy and currency, and remarkable clarity. The dynamic author team builds on their expertise and experience as leading researchers and award-winning teachers to help students develop conceptual understanding and to think about the practical, real-world use of chemistry.

In the 14th Edition, the authors incorporate educational research, teacher preferences and data from thousands of student users to enhance the text's clarity and to revise data-driven problems and questions.

Hallmark features of this title

  • Visualizing Concepts exercises help develop a conceptual understanding of key ideas through models, graphs and other visuals.
  • Integrative Exercises connect key concepts in the current chapter with those from previous chapters.
  • Molecular illustrations are computer-generated illustrations that present matter at the atomic level.
  • Design An Experiment activities use an inquiry-based, open-ended approach to stimulate students to think like a scientist.
  • Go Figure questions encourage students to stop and analyze the artwork to understand the concept behind it.
  • Learning Outcomes at the end of each chapter identify skills that students should be able to perform after studying each section, allowing them to check their mastery.

New and updated features of this title

  • NEW: 50 Interactive Sample Exercises have been added to guide students through the problem-solving process using the Analyze/Plan/Solve/Check technique.
  • NEW: A Closer Look essays cover high-interest topics, recent news and discoveries in the field of chemistry, and relevant applications.
  • NEW: How To features offer step-by step guidance for solving specific types of problems such as Drawing Lewis Structures, Balancing Redox Equations, Naming Acids and more.
  • Chemistry and Life, and Chemistry Put to Work help students connect chemistry to world events, scientific discoveries, and medical breakthroughs.
  • Strategies for Success essays encourage students to think like chemists and aid students in analyzing information and organizing thoughts to improve problem solving and critical thinking.
  • Practice Exercises test mastery of key concepts and touch on the most common misconceptions based on the authors consulting the ACS Chemistry Concept inventory before writing the questions.

Highlights of the DIGITAL UPDATE for Mastering Chemistry (available for Fall 2020 classes)

Instructors, contact your sales rep to ensure you have the most recent version of the course.

  • EXPANDED: Interactive Sample Exercises feature 50 new exercises with author Math Stoltzfus using the Analyze/Plan/Solve/Check technique to guide students through the problem-solving process.
  • NEW: Self-assessment exercises are a series of questions at each section's end, allowing students to assess their understanding of the content and include author-written, answer-specific feedback.
  • ENHANCED: 10 End-of-Chapter problem sets, revised with real data, modern applications and new problems, provide instructors with alternate chemistry problems.

Features of Mastering Chemistry for the 14th Edition; published 2017

  • SmartFigures walk students through complex visual representations and dispel common misconceptions by converting a static in-text figure into a dynamic process narrated by one of the authors.
  • Dynamic Study Modules specific to the text are assignable and pose a series of question sets about a course topic, adapt to each student's performance and offer personalized feedback.
  • Ready-to-Go Study Tools in the Study Area help students master the toughest topics and include Key Concept Videos, Interactive Worked Examples and problem sets.

Features of Pearson eText for the 14th Edition; published 2020

  • NEW: 50 Interactive Sample Exercises guide students through the problem-solving process using the Analyze/Plan/Solve/Check technique. A play icon identifies each Interactive Sample Exercise and launches a presentation of author Math Stoltzfus bringing key Sample Exercises to life.
  • Give It Some Thought (GIST) are interactive in the eText, giving students access to informal, sharply focused exercises that test just how well they're getting it as they move through the course.
  • Learning Outcomes appear at section and chapter levels, allowing students to check their mastery of the material and focus on smaller pieces of information and skills they should be able to perform.
  1. Introduction: Matter, Energy, and Measurement
  2. Atoms, Molecules, and Ions
  3. Chemical Reactions and Reaction Stoichiometry
  4. Reactions in Aqueous Solution
  5. Thermochemistry
  6. Electronic Structure of Atoms
  7. Periodic Properties of the Elements
  8. Basic Concepts of Chemical Bonding
  9. Molecular Geometry and Bonding Theories
  10. Gases
  11. Liquids and Intermolecular Forces
  12. Solids and Modern Materials
  13. Properties of Solutions
  14. Chemical Kinetics
  15. Chemical Equilibrium
  16. Acid-Base Equilibria
  17. Additional Aspects of Aqueous Equilibria
  18. Chemistry of the Environment
  19. Chemical Thermodynamics
  20. Electrochemistry
  21. Nuclear Chemistry
  22. Chemistry of the Nonmetals
  23. Transition Metals and Coordination Chemistry
  24. The Chemistry of Life: Organic and Biological Chemistry

APPENDICES

  • Mathematical Operations
  • Properties of Water
  • Thermodynamic Quantities for Selected Substances at 298.15 K (25ο C)
  • Aqueous Equilibrium Constants
  • Standard Reduction Potentials at 25ο C
  • Answers to Selected Exercises
  • Answers to Give It Some Thought
  • Answers to Go Figure
  • Answer to Selected Practice Exercises

About our authors

THEODORE L. BROWN received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1956. Since then, he has been a member of the faculty of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he is now Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus. He served as Vice Chancellor for Research, and Dean of The Graduate College, from 1980 to 1986, and as Founding Director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology from 1987 to 1993. Professor Brown has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1972 he was awarded the American Chemical Society Award for Research in Inorganic Chemistry and received the American Chemical Society Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry in 1993. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Chemical Society.

EUGENE LEMAY, JR., received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Pacific Lutheran University (Washington) and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1966 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He then joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is currently Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus. He has enjoyed Visiting Professorships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at the University College of Wales in Great Britain, and at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor LeMay is a popular and effective teacher, who has taught thousands of students during more than 40 years of university teaching. Known for the clarity of his lectures and his sense of humor, he has received several teaching awards, including the University Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award (1991) and the first Regents' Teaching Award given by the State of Nevada Board of Regents (1997).

BRUCE E. BURSTEN received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1978. After two years as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Texas A&M University, he joined the faculty of The Ohio State University, where he rose to the rank of Distinguished University Professor. In 2005, he moved to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Professor Bursten has been a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, and he is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society. At Ohio State he has received the University Distinguished Teaching Award in 1982 and 1996, the Arts and Sciences Student Council Outstanding Teaching Award in 1984, and the University Distinguished Scholar Award in 1990. He received the Spiers Memorial Prize and Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2003, and the Morley Medal of the Cleveland Section of the American Chemical Society in 2005. He was President of the American Chemical Society for 2008. In addition to his teaching and service activities, Professor Bursten's research program focuses on compounds of the transition-metal and actinide elements.

CATHERINE J. MURPHY received two B.S. degrees, one in Chemistry and one in Biochemistry, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1986. She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1990. She was a National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1993. In 1993, she joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, becoming the Guy F. Lipscomb Professor of Chemistry in 2003. In 2009 she moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, as the Peter C. and Gretchen Miller Markunas Professor of Chemistry. Professor Murphy has been honored for both research and teaching as a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, a Cottrell Scholar of the Research Corporation, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award winner, and a subsequent NSF Award for Special Creativity. She has also received a USC Mortar Board Excellence in Teaching Award, the USC Golden Key Faculty Award for Creative Integration of Research and Undergraduate Teaching, the USC Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the USC Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award. Since 2006, Professor Murphy has served as a Senior Editor for the Journal of Physical Chemistry. In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Murphy's research program focuses on the synthesis and optical properties of inorganic nanomaterials, and on the local structure and dynamics of the DNA double helix.

PATRICK M. WOODWARD received B.S. degrees in both Chemistry and Engineering from Idaho State University in 1991. He received a M.S. degree in Materials Science and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Oregon State University in 1996. He spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at The Ohio State University where he currently holds the rank of Professor. He has enjoyed visiting professorships at the University of Bordeaux in France and the University of Sydney in Australia. Professor Woodward has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award winner. He currently serves as an Associate Editor to the Journal of Solid State Chemistry and as the director of the Ohio REEL program, an NSF-funded center that works to bring authentic research experiments into the laboratories of first- and second-year chemistry classes in 15 colleges and universities across the state of Ohio. Professor Woodward's research program focuses on understanding the links between bonding, structure, and properties of solid-state inorganic functional materials.

MATTHEW W. STOLTZFUS received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Millersville University in 2002 and his Ph. D. in Chemistry in 2007 from The Ohio State University. He spent two years as a teaching postdoctoral assistant for the Ohio REEL program, an NSF-funded center that works to bring authentic research experiments into the general chemistry lab curriculum in 15 colleges and universities across the state of Ohio. In 2009, he joined the faculty of Ohio State where he currently holds the position of Chemistry Lecturer. In addition to lecturing general chemistry, Stoltzfus accepted the Faculty Fellow position for the Digital First Initiative, inspiring instructors to offer engaging digital learning content to students through emerging technology. Through this initiative, he developed an iTunes U general chemistry course, which has attracted over 120,000 students from all over the world. Stoltzfus has received several teaching awards, including the inaugural Ohio State University 2013 Provost's Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Lecturer and he is recognized as an Apple Distinguished Educator.

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