Product Description
Updated to reflect the most recent Advanced Placement Chemistry exams, this manual presents three diagnostic tests and three full-length practice exams, all with questions answered and explained. The author also presents additional routine and more challenging problems in every chapter. A complete review of AP chemistry topics covers the structure of matter, chemical bonding, states of matter, physical chemistry, chemical reactions, and other topics that appear on t… More >>
#1 by QTð the 2 on January 28, 2010 - 6:24 pm
It arrived too close for comfort… my teacher was gonna deduct 100 points if it had arrived one day later. and the product it’s self was in good condition. personally i’d choose another ap chem book unless u need it/ a teacher assigned it to you. it’s not at all user friendly i had a horrible time reading it and it was poorly arranged. the text book was much better it had key words highlighted unlike the ap book. which has very few words bolded and most words that are arn’t very useful at all.
so..
deliveray… almost too slow
product … good
Rating: 3 / 5
#2 by Y. Kim on January 28, 2010 - 7:33 pm
hm.. the condition is good enough
but the back part of the book is cleanly cut.
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Dan H. Phan on January 28, 2010 - 9:08 pm
I am studying for my DAT now and i think this book is much more sufficient than Kaplan. I took my general chemistry 5 years ago; thats why some of the important concept had faded out of my memory.
I am really scared since i dont want to go back to my gen textbook; i am glad that i picked out this book
The book also very organize and really easy to understand.
I recommend for any students who are struggled with General Chem to have this book.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by ABM on January 28, 2010 - 10:49 pm
While it can be argued that this book does what it is intended to – provide a review of chemistry as preparation for the AP – it is difficult to justify several glaring issues with it.
1. Mistakes in the book – For a book coming from a company as well-known as Barron’s, and for a test as widely taken as the AP Chemistry exam, one would expect that this book would be well-written and carefully checked over for errors. Instead, nearly every two or three pages there are errors that, while not immediately noticeable, can cause a good deal of confusion, especially when they involve miscalculations in example problems or chapter exercises.
2. Example problems – Errors in the problems aside, one would also expect that for a test that does not allow calculators the example problems in this book would be similar to those on the test; that is, they would be doable by hand. Instead, as other reviewers have pointed out, the problems expect you to do such calculations as negative logs and exponents without a calculator, which is totally unrealistic.
3. Over preparation – While I heartily agree that it is better to go into a test over prepared rather than under prepared, Barron’s takes it to an extreme. Not only are there equations in the book that will almost certainly not be taught in an AP Chemistry course, let alone appear on the AP test, the level of detail the book goes into frequently ends up making the information cryptic and difficult to comprehend instead of lucid and clear. Indeed, the sheer length of the book is comparable to that of an AP Chemistry textbook, which makes it less than ideal for simply reviewing material before the exam.
Overall, this book will prepare you for the AP test. However, you will in the process be confronted with a tidal wave of typos, calculation errors, poorly written questions, and far more information and detail than is necessary. I’d expect better from Barron’s.
Rating: 2 / 5
#5 by A. Lee on January 29, 2010 - 12:47 am
The review is good, but the practice problems are faulty.
For example, already in Chapter 1, practice problem 8 and 12 have major mistakes. In Problem 8, 10^14 was written 1014, complicating the problem. In Problem 12, the question refers to a concept discussed in chapter 2…
I did not read further, but if I was able to find 2 faulty problems in such close proximity in chapter 1, then there must be many, many more.
I would not buy this book. I have seriously lost confidence in Barron’s.
Rating: 1 / 5