| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £8.70
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Principles and Problems in Physical Chemistry for Biochemists for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £8.70, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
"Remarkably efficient [at] putting across conceptually difficult material ... Principles and Problems will continue to be essential reading for biochemistry undergraduates." The Biochemist, June 2002
Product Description
What use is physical chemistry to the student of biochemistry and biology? This central question is answered in this book mainly through the use of worked examples and problems. The book starts by introducing the laws of thermodynamics, and then uses these laws to derive the equations relevant to the student in dealing with chemical equilibria (including the binding of small molecules to proteins), properties of solutions, acids and bases, and oxidation-reduction processes. The student is thus shown how a knowledge of thermodynamic qualities makes it possible to predict whether, and how, a reaction will proceed. Thermodynamics, however, gives no information about how fast a reaction will happen. The study of the rates at which processes occur (kinetics) forms the second main theme of the book. This section poses and answers questions such as `how is the rate of a reaction affected by temperature, pH, ionic strength, and the nature of the reactants? These same ideas are then shown to be useful in the study of enzyme-catalysed reactions.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
All biological systems, varying from single cells to multicellular organisms, like the reader, are a complex collection of interlinked chemical reactions. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
All biological systems, varying from single cells to multicellular organisms, like the reader, are a complex collection of interlinked chemical reactions. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is very good. It is written for undergraduate biochemists (and is basically the first year physical chemistry course given to Oxford Biochemists).
It covers the three key areas of physical chemistry: Thermodynamics, Kinetics and Atomic and Molecular Structure. It generally sticks to pure chemistry, but includes lots of biochemical examples. Some chapters are specifically about biochemical matters (e.g. macromolecule structure and bonding, enzyme kinetics, biochemical pathways).
Features / advantages:
1) Clear and simple writing style with plenty of easy to understand figures
2) Worked examples, separated from the main text which really provide insight into how the equations discussed in the text are used
3) Problem questions with fully worked answers
4) Sections summarising chapters, listing key points
The mathematical demads are minimal. Anyone with AS or A-level maths will find the maths in this book easy. Only very basic calculus is required.
I should note that this book does NOT discuss biophysical techniques (like X-ray crystallography or NMR spectroscopy or mass spectroscopy or uses of UV and IR radiation to probe macromolecules). This is not a failure of this book, it is simply not what this book is about (though some people seem to expect to find these sorts of topics in this kind of book).
The text clearly separates introductory topics with more complicated sections. For example, there is a chapter on single-step kinetics, which introduces some kinetic concepts, but then we move on to multi-step reactions and multisubstrate enzyme kinetics (more challenging sections). I find other books jump in to these more complicated areas without giving a firm grounding in the basics, but this book does not do that.
I was taught by Wormald and Ratcliffe, the authors of this edition, and both are fine teachers. The book is also an excellent teaching resource with clear writing, as well as questions with fully worked answers. Great for self-teaching as well as for helping with lectures on these topics.
This book is written for undergrad biochemists, and really is the clearest way that the physical chemistry needed for biochemists has been presented anywhere. A must for all biochemists.
It covers the three key areas of physical chemistry: Thermodynamics, Kinetics and Atomic and Molecular Structure. It generally sticks to pure chemistry, but includes lots of biochemical examples. Some chapters are specifically about biochemical matters (e.g. macromolecule structure and bonding, enzyme kinetics, biochemical pathways).
Features / advantages:
1) Clear and simple writing style with plenty of easy to understand figures
2) Worked examples, separated from the main text which really provide insight into how the equations discussed in the text are used
3) Problem questions with fully worked answers
4) Sections summarising chapters, listing key points
The mathematical demads are minimal. Anyone with AS or A-level maths will find the maths in this book easy. Only very basic calculus is required.
I should note that this book does NOT discuss biophysical techniques (like X-ray crystallography or NMR spectroscopy or mass spectroscopy or uses of UV and IR radiation to probe macromolecules). This is not a failure of this book, it is simply not what this book is about (though some people seem to expect to find these sorts of topics in this kind of book).
The text clearly separates introductory topics with more complicated sections. For example, there is a chapter on single-step kinetics, which introduces some kinetic concepts, but then we move on to multi-step reactions and multisubstrate enzyme kinetics (more challenging sections). I find other books jump in to these more complicated areas without giving a firm grounding in the basics, but this book does not do that.
I was taught by Wormald and Ratcliffe, the authors of this edition, and both are fine teachers. The book is also an excellent teaching resource with clear writing, as well as questions with fully worked answers. Great for self-teaching as well as for helping with lectures on these topics.
This book is written for undergrad biochemists, and really is the clearest way that the physical chemistry needed for biochemists has been presented anywhere. A must for all biochemists.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
With over 20 years of editing and corrections behind it this book is quite simply unbeatable as an introduction to biophysics as used by biochemists.It is by no means a specialist text for the techniques covered but rather does not set out to be.Instead each chapter provides a clear and logical primer for a given concept or application. The sample questions with worked answers further aid comprehension of what can be a challenging and confusing topic if handled incorrectly. I have not seen the revised edition but I doubt that it can have found much to improve upon.
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent text that successfully expands physical chemistry concepts in a biological framework. Thus, it serves as an excellent bridge that helps contextualise the often dry descriptions found in chemistry texts such as Atkins. It is well written and the diagrams integrate nicely with the text. This text clarified certain aspects of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics that I had difficulty understanding since the first year. The practice problems are fine for grasping the concepts discussed, but limited number means I only give this book four stars. However, this text is heartily recommended for any biologists or biochemists wanting to learn more about physical chemistry.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Biochemistry
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Biological Science > Molecular Biology
- Books > Science & Nature > Chemistry > Physical Chemistry
- Books > Science & Nature > Mathematics > Education > Higher Education
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Biology > Molecular Biology
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical > Chemistry > Physical Chemistry
- Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Social Sciences > Linguistics > Reference
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
