Good Chemistry books?

[The Grim Squeaker]

I'm starting my degree from scratch next year, and i'll be studying biology. That means chemistry, which I haven't studied beforehand in my life in any way, fashion or form.

So, what are some really good books about basic chemistry and organic chemistry in English for me to read over the summer to help me hit the ground with a running "BAMF!"?

(I'll be studying "Chemistry for biologists", Organic chemistry, chem lab and cellular biochemistry [which seems irrelevant])

[phongn]

How on Earth is biochemistry irrelevant for a biology degree?

EDIT: Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry is more or less the canonical textbook in the US. As for other reading - find some textbooks reviews on Amazon and see how people like it?

[The Grim Squeaker]

How on Earth is biochemistry irrelevant for a biology degree?

EDIT: Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry is more or less the canonical textbook in the US. As for other reading - find some textbooks reviews on Amazon and see how people like it?

I mean, cellular biochemistry is irrelevant when talking about Chemistry "101" books.

[Gil Hamilton]

Puh-puh-pardon me? Did you just utter than biochemistry was irrevelant to a biology stint? Oh MAN dude, you are in for a TREAT. Your first step is slap yourself across your face until you convince yourself that biochemistry is going to be central to alot of the courses you are going to take, particularly with how many biology majors are taught today.

The second step is that phongn cited a good book and made a good suggestion. Further, you can contact your universities chemistry department and ask them what texts they use, since you'll likely see them again. Though, if you want some serious chemnerd swag, I think Linus Pauling's "General Chemistry" (yes, THAT Linus Pauling) is still in publication.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Puh-puh-pardon me? Did you just utter than biochemistry was irrevelant to a biology stint? Oh MAN dude, you are in for a TREAT. Your first step is slap yourself across your face until you convince yourself that biochemistry is going to be central to alot of the courses you are going to take, particularly with how many biology majors are taught today.

The second step is that phongn cited a good book and made a good suggestion. Further, you can contact your universities chemistry department and ask them what texts they use, since you'll likely see them again. Though, if you want some serious chemnerd swag, I think Linus Pauling's "General Chemistry" (yes, THAT Linus Pauling) is still in publication.

I mean, that it's irrelevant to asking for a good book about basic chemistry or organic chemistry as far as I know. (I included iti n case anyone had good popular science books to reccomend that might include said subject).

And technically, I won't be studying it until the year after the next, I might be cramming it in a year early.

The university department here teaches in Hebrew .


EDIT: Also, I'm doing brain science .

[phongn]

I mean, that it's irrelevant to asking for a good book about basic chemistry or organic chemistry as far as I know. (I included iti n case anyone had good popular science books to reccomend that might include said subject).

If you are serious about this then ignore the popular science books and go straight to textbooks (and maybe study guides for them.)

[The Grim Squeaker]

I mean, that it's irrelevant to asking for a good book about basic chemistry or organic chemistry as far as I know. (I included iti n case anyone had good popular science books to reccomend that might include said subject).

If you are serious about this then ignore the popular science books and go straight to textbooks (and maybe study guides for them.)

I'd rather go for both and all.

[Serafina]

Pop-science books are, at least from what i gather from my studiyng friends, a waste of time, space and money if you actually want to study that stuff.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Pop-science books are, at least from what i gather from my studiyng friends, a waste of time, space and money if you actually want to study that stuff.

Richard Dawkins? Jared Diamond? Feynmann?

[Serafina]

Pop-science books are, at least from what i gather from my studiyng friends, a waste of time, space and money if you actually want to study that stuff.

Richard Dawkins? Jared Diamond? Feynmann?

They are quite informative, but do not nearly contain precise enough information for serious studies.

[Raesene]

I'm starting my degree from scratch next year, and i'll be studying biology. That means chemistry, which I haven't studied beforehand in my life in any way, fashion or form.

So, what are some really good books about basic chemistry and organic chemistry in English for me to read over the summer to help me hit the ground with a running "BAMF!"?

(I'll be studying "Chemistry for biologists", Organic chemistry, chem lab and cellular biochemistry [which seems irrelevant])

Dawkins etc are fun to read, but their pop sci books are not scientific textbooks.

My advice is the same as Gil's: find out what books are recommended for the starting classes in the subjects you mentioned by your future professors (or maybe even have been written by them). Another option: ask some of the current students there for lecture notes; I don't know wether your university has some kind of student's union - ours sold lecture notes (sometimes corrected and amended by the professors) for a low fee to cover reproduction costs.

The only book I remember using (and not hating) is Albert's 'Molecular Biology of the Cell', but that's not really basic chemistry.

[phongn]

Pop-science books are, at least from what i gather from my studiyng friends, a waste of time, space and money if you actually want to study that stuff.

Richard Dawkins? Jared Diamond? Feynmann?

Feynman's serious books are worthwhile for rigorous study.

You asked this question before when you were preparing to enter a computer science program and got much the same answers: don't bother with the pop-science stuff if you want serious study. I know you enjoy reading - and pop-science books tend to be infinitely more readable than textbooks - but in the words of Rickover, it's time to "put your nose to the grindstone".

EDIT: As another note, I found the best way to do organic chemistry is to think of it as a sort of math with its own operators and rules.

[Gil Hamilton]

Feynman wrote the gamut. He's got serious texts, stuff like "QED" which is a layman's guide, and then his popular story books. Feynman also won't help you learn any chemistry at all, since like any good theoretical physicist, he's snide toward chemists.

In QED, he explains that all things have four rules.

1. Photons move from place to place.
2. Electrons move from place to place.
3. Photons may be absorbed or emitted from electrons.
4. The Pauli Exclusion Principle.

It's at this point, he states that he has explained all of chemistry once and for all, and closes the book on it.

Naturally, this leaves all us silly chemists to scratch their heads and go "Uh, the devil's in the details, Mr. Feynman!", but like Dirac thought, everything else IS just details.

[Melchior]

Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry is good (and even well-written, if rather dry), but you'll discover that biochemistry is mostly about pathways and not very concerned with actual reaction mechanics, so it isn't the right book if you want to learn about basic chemistry (since it doesn't actually talk about it). Molecular Biology of the Cell (Alberts et al.) is very good too, but again, it's not about basic chemistry (and extremely ponderous). I can't personally recommend any basic chemistry book because I did the inorganic/organic chemistry exams using handout material from our professors, personalized to the course (med students don't really learn a lot of inorganic chemistry) and every book that I can think of isn't really suited to be a introduction to the subject.

[Gil Hamilton]

The reason you get biochemistry books that are built around pathways is because the body is full of enzymes that we don't have a particularly good idea about what exactly they actually do. We can measure the chemicals that go in and the chemicals that go out, what chirality they have, and enzyme velocity and all that cool stuff, but we can only speculate how the reactions actually work.

After all, ANY reaction mechanism is a guess by definition. My physical organic teacher told us to never leave a reaction mechanism blank. Draw some arrows, make electrons go from hah to thah in legal ways, never draw five bonds to a carbon, because even the reaction mechanisms you find in text books are only really educated guesses. We are getting better all the time of observing reactions (particularly enzymes) in action, though; single molecule studies, particularly with large macromolecules, have really taken off in that regard. But at the end of the day, at the moment, a biochemist can only know what goes into the box and what comes out of it, and at what rates.

[Melchior]

After all, ANY reaction mechanism is a guess by definition. My physical organic teacher told us to never leave a reaction mechanism blank. Draw some arrows, make electrons go from hah to thah in legal ways, never draw five bonds to a carbon, because even the reaction mechanisms you find in text books are only really educated guesses. We are getting better all the time of observing reactions (particularly enzymes) in action, though; single molecule studies, particularly with large macromolecules, have really taken off in that regard. But at the end of the day, at the moment, a biochemist can only know what goes into the box and what comes out of it, and at what rates.

Very important/very simple ones have been studied somewhat extensively (for example, hemoglobin-mediated oxygen transport; this one has also direct medical implication if something goes wrong, and it's relatively easy to see what isn't working with the various "pathological" versions, that helps).

[Akhlut]

I'm starting my degree from scratch next year, and i'll be studying biology. That means chemistry, which I haven't studied beforehand in my life in any way, fashion or form.

So, what are some really good books about basic chemistry and organic chemistry in English for me to read over the summer to help me hit the ground with a running "BAMF!"?

(I'll be studying "Chemistry for biologists", Organic chemistry, chem lab and cellular biochemistry [which seems irrelevant])

If your university has a student bill-board sort of thing, just put up an offer to buy the first year chemistry book and a few other similar texts from the other students. Unless the chemistry department is going to completely switch books from one publisher to another, the book you'd be buying should be mostly the same as the one for next year, even if they update editions.

Proceed to read and study the shit out of those books. Look up workbooks online, too, to work with (make sure it has an answer key so you know what the hell you're doing).

Since you've expressed interest in neuroscience, be aware that you're going to have to learn a shitload about chemistry (neurochemistry is complex, oddly enough), developmental biology, and scads of other things because the brain is full of unusual things and is extremely complex.

Also, I would discourage you from going into neuroscience unless you have a goddamn PASSION for it. Hell, even biology, because it is complicated, messy, and requires a melding of a dozen different disciplines to be studied at its best.