The Basics of General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry
GOB (General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry) is traditionally taught as either a one-semester or a two-semester format. Based on the preface, this particular book was specifically written for a one-semester course. This book does a good job covering the subject of GOB; however, the subjects presented are covered at a sufficient depth for either a one-semester or two-semester course. There was no table of contents, index, or glossary (clickable or otherwise) in the PDF that I downloaded from the Open Textbook Library and reviewed. This created a lot of work when navigating within the textbook. There is a section at the end of each chapter devoted to summarizing the chapter including the keywords.
Overall, the content is fairly accurate. There are a few errors in figure designations in the text. For example, there is a reference to Figure 1.2 that details the steps of the scientific method in section 1.2 under “Elements and Compounds”. Either this was an intentional placeholder for the addition of a different figure that describes “Elements or Compounds” rather than the scientific method or this is an error in the placement of this reference. In addition, in the PDF that I downloaded and reviewed, there is a reference in section 1.5 to a hyperlink rather than text stating “Figure 1.7 Measuring an Object to the Correct Number of Digits”. In addition to section 1.5, this type of reference to a hyperlink rather than a title is also found in sections 1.6, 4.6, 9.1, 10.1, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 13.2, 13.5, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 18.4, 18.5, 18.6, 18.7, and 18.8. Finally, in Figure 8.4 there is a filled-wedge connecting H and F in hydrogen fluoride. This may be confusing for students especially since the figure is used to describe polar covalent bonds rather than geometry. The wedges are used in the subsequent figure (8.5) to represent geometry.
The core chemistry content in GOB at this particular level should be relevant for a substantial period of time. There are a few instances where there is some obsolescence. For example, in section 4.6 in the “To Your Health” section there is a reference to the Food Pyramid or MyPyramid. This was replaced by MyPlate in 2011, so this content is about 6 years old at the time of this review. However, it would be relatively easy to update this particular section and/or figure.
The text was accessible and provided adequate context to help with understanding the chemical terminology.
This textbook had a consistent set of terminology and framework with just a few exceptions that I could find. In chapter 12, there is a reference preceding Figure 12.2 that requests the reader to recall that the VSEPR theory correctly predicts a tetrahedral shape for the methane molecule from section 4.5. Section 4.5 doesn’t talk about or show the structure or geometry of methane. If the reference were changed from methane to carbon tetrachloride or if methane were added into section 4.5, this would provide internal consistency. The naming of chapter 14 (organic compounds of oxygen) and chapter 15 (organic acids and bases and derivatives) is somewhat problematic in attempting to group related compounds. Carboxylic acids would seem to fit into either chapter, but are contained in the organics acids and bases categories for obvious reasons (i.e. oxygen containing compounds that are acids). Thiols aren’t compounds of oxygen though they are somewhat related as noted in the text and aren’t traditionally placed within the category of organic acids and bases at the level of a one-semester GOB textbook. Esters would seem to fit best in the title for chapter 14, but are traditionally placed in the chapter that contains carboxylic acids since they are related by chemical reactivity (i.e. esterification). It would seem that there could be a more consistent division of content either by using different chapter names for thee existing chapters or by adding an additional organic chemistry chapter.
The text is very modular which is a huge benefit of this text. There is ample division of chapters into sections that can be individually used, abbreviated, or discarded based on the course. While this text is meant for a one-semester course, it would be difficult to cover all of the included content in 15-weeks and achieve student proficiency in each of the sections. Of course, care must be taken not to remove keywords and topics that are referenced in a future chapter if sections are discarded.
The topics are ordered in nearly the same way as printed GOB textbooks. Some instructors prefer the introduction to organic chemistry found at the end of chapter 4 (section 4.6) in this textbook to be shifted to the beginning of chapter 12. The authors did address this placement in their preface and it does show some integration of organic into general chemistry even though that was not their focus. It would seem that this section would need to be reviewed when the students reach chapter 12 which is not a bad thing, but there is a lot of content in the book to cover in the traditional 15-week semester. The other sections that could fit within either a general or organic/biological chemistry chapter are sections 5.6 (redox in organic and biochemistry) and 7.5 (energy of biochemical reactions). If section 4.6 were moved to chapter 12, then 5.6 and 7.5 would likely need to be moved into an organic or biological chemistry chapter as well. In either case, sections 4.6, 5.6, and 7.5 in their present locations don’t present a logical disruption to the flow of the book. One additional note, the use of wedges is first used within a figure in section 4.5 and then again in section 8.4 and 8.5, but the topic of wedges isn’t explained or described until section 12.2.
The vast majority of the figures and tables were free of distortion and were high quality. I only noticed a few instances where the layout of figures or tables spans two pages. The most notable and perhaps distracting instance occurs when a table is not only split between two pages, but one of the rows of content within the table is split between two pages. In all of the instances that I noticed, the table headings are present on both pages of a split table, which certainly helps mitigate some of the distraction. I don’t think these pagination issues would be an issue in an ePUB, but the only format currently available from the Open Textbook Library is a PDF. The lack of other ebook formats is perhaps one of the biggest problems with this particular text. This type of splitting of content within a row across pages in the PDF is seen in Tables 3.4, 18.4, 18.5, and 18.6. This doesn’t seem to be about maintaining a large enough font size because the text in Figures 3.7 and 19.13 is very small. In Table 12.4, the “Condensed Structural Formula” heading is so cramped within its column that the heading is wrapped into eleven rows with a maximum of three letters from the heading in any one row. In addition, the condensed structural formulas are also wrapped within their respective rows potentially causing confusion for students. This same type of wrapping of text of single word can be seen in Table 18.2. In Table 20.1, both the text and structures are all low-resolution bitmapped images. This particular table would definitely benefit from an update. Many of the metabolism specific flow charts (Figure 20.4, 20.12, 20.14, and 20.16) would also benefit from a vector graphic based treatment since the text is hard to read when bitmapped.
There were a few typos found in the text and figures. For example, pyruvate is spelled incorrectly in Figure 20.4.
I did not notice any culturally insensitive or offensive text.