Seymour/Carraher's Polymer Chemistry (Undergraduate Chemistry, 16)

Rating:
Summary: Error filled text.
Review: I had used an earlier edition of this book in one of my courses years ago and found it to be full of errors. I should have examined this 5th edition more carefully before I chose it as the text for a course this year. I looked at the early chapters, and they seemed to be okay. Since I didn't have many other options at the time and the coverage was at the right level for my undergraduate polymer chemistry course, I went with it. The problem I have found is that the book is full of errors, poorly written, and very poorly edited.

For example, the mechanisms given in section 7.16 would not pass muster in any sophomore organic chemistry course. They omit steps, leave out electron pairs, have arrows pointing in the wrong direction, and show electron pairs moving to atoms that already have a full complement of electrons.

As an example of poor editing in section 7.6, aramids are defined in one paragraph and then defined again in the very next paragraph and then still again a few paragraphs later. It's a though these paragraphs were cut and pasted from someplace, but never read together. Kevlar is also called "Kevlor" in this section.

Some other errors include calling an alkoxide ion a "carbanion", making references to data in a table when the data isn't there, referencing the wrong table in an earlier chapter, and even referencing the wrong early chapter.

I cannot recommend this book for use in a classroom. Students tend to take what is written as the gospel, or they don't have the confidence to question something that looks wrong to them. There are other books that are much better for use in an undergraduate course in polymer chemistry.

Rating:
Summary: Seymour/Carraher's Polymer Chemistry is carelessly written
Review: This nominally comprehensive textbook on polymer chemistry is filled with information, but appears to be carelessly edited. Since this is the fifth edition, it may be that material added throughout the editions have been tacked on to existing material without trying to integrate it into the previous material. Many times, the same information is repeated in subsequent paragraphs with different words. I have found many typo, spelling and chemical formula errors in the text.