(Part 3) Top products from r/chemistry

I like this book for C++ if you want to learn C++. Python is easier though and most people start with Python. I like the book Learn Python the Hard Way (it's actually a pretty easy book lol) but there are quite a lot of books that are good for Python. (and I'm like 99% certain there are free versions of these books available on the web)

That's probably a good way to see if you like coding. Personally I love it 'cause it's a lot of problem solving, and then forcing a computer to do your evil bidding work.

Then for the chemistry part. I think everybody on the planet and their brother loves this book (it's also free on google). That will help you learn about the theory behind the software.

I also think you should talk to a professor who does computational work to let you toy around with it. I've had two advisors now in comp chem, and I get the feeling if a student came to either of them and said they wanted to play around with the software and see what comp chem is like, both of those professors would probably have been happy to set them up with an account to a supercomputer and show them a few tricks to setting up jobs, running simulations/calculations, viewing data, etc.

Hey there,

Congrats on your interest in chemistry! I’ll briefly answer your questions.

What books, websites(youtube channels included), or magazines would you guys recommend?

If you have a Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/ACSReactions/
https://m.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has some cool stuff. Check them out. They recommend magazines on their site.

I own tons of chemistry books and I recommend you just read what interests you honestly. The chemistry world is pretty big...I can recommend a book for you to pick up for college though! See below! I guarantee you will love it. It will aid you as you go through your degree, whether you decided on the chemistry or chemical engineer route.



How could I prepare for getting a degree in chem?
https://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Maths-Book-Erich-Steiner/dp/0199205353

I wish I had this book during my undergrad years. Work on your math skill. Your love of chemistry will take care of the rest. I believe the math is the biggest deterrent for most people.


What fields are there in chem besides organic and inorganic?

The main branches are: Physical, Inorganic, Organic, and Analytical. There are many subjects though that branch off the basics of the main branches though. Examples: Material chem, biological, photochem, catalysis, surface, environmental, gas, electrochemistry, nuclear, radiochem, and the list goes on...I hope this helps. I can answer more questions later. Good luck!

Personally I make a distinction between scripting and programming that doesn't really exist but highlights the differences I guess. I consider myself to be scripting if I am connecting programs together by manipulating input and output data. There is lots of regular expression pain and trial-and-error involved in this and I have hated it since my first day of research when I had to write a perl script to extract the energies from thousands of gaussian runs. I appreciate it, but I despise it in equal measure. Programming I love, and I consider this to be implementing a solution to a physical problem in a stricter language and trying to optimise the solution. I've done a lot of this in fortran and java (I much prefer java after a steep learning curve from procedural to OOP). I love the initial math and understanding, the planning, the implementing and seeing the results. Debugging is as much of a pain as scripting, but I've found the more code I write the less stupid mistakes I make and I know what to look for given certain error messages. If I could just do scientific programming I would, but sadly that's not realistic. When you get to do it it's great though.

The maths for comp chem is very similar to the maths used by all the physical sciences and engineering. My go to reference is Arfken but there are others out there. The table of contents at least will give you a good idea of appropriate topics. Your university library will definitely have a selection of lower-level books with more detail that you can build from. I find for learning maths it's best to get every book available and decide which one suits you best. It can be very personal and when you find a book by someone who thinks about the concepts similarly to you it is so much easier.
For learning programming, there are usually tutorials online that will suffice. I have used O'Reilly books with good results. I'd recommend that you follow the tutorials as if you need all of the functionality, even when you know you won't. Otherwise you get holes in your knowledge that can be hard to close later on. It is good supplementary exercise to find a method in a comp chem book, then try to implement it (using google when you get stuck). My favourite algorithms book is Numerical Recipes - there are older fortran versions out there too. It contains a huge amount of detailed practical information and is geared directly at computational science. It has good explanations of math concepts too.

For the actual chemistry, I learned a lot from Jensen's book and Leach's book. I have heard good things about this one too, but I think it's more advanced. For Quantum, there is always Szabo & Ostlund which has code you can refer to, as well as Levine. I am slightly divorced from the QM side of things so I don't have many other recommendations in that area. For statistical mechanics it starts and ends with McQuarrie for me. I have not had to understand much of it in my career so far though. I can also recommend the Oxford Primers series. They're cheap and make solid introductions/refreshers. I saw in another comment you are interested potentially in enzymology. If so, you could try Warshel's book which has more code and implementation exercises but is as difficult as the man himself.

Jensen comes closest to a detailed, general introduction from the books I've spent time with. Maybe focus on that first. I could go on for pages and pages about how I'd approach learning if I was back at undergrad so feel free to ask if you have any more questions.



Out of curiosity, is it DLPOLY that's irritating you so much?

The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry is an excellent and entertaining introduction. It's a fun read, and it explains topics that may have been otherwise dull or difficult in a very entertaining and easy to grasp manner. A good friend of mine who has taken a few chemistry courses was pretty impressed with it, and said it contained much of the material you lean in your first two college classes.

Anything by Feynmann are great reads. For upper division instrumental analysis, spectroscopy, and quantum I wholly recommend QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman et al. It describes all the concepts in the book in layman's terms in a brilliant narrative of chemistry. I recommend it to anyone that wants to learn about the strangeness of physics and chemistry. It is easy to digest.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics, although pricey helped me survive physics (I have the paperbacks). It seems you can read the entirety online at that site.

If you choose to do a lot of organic chemistry laboratory work then Advanced Practical Organic Chemistry is a really great resource. It covers just about everything you need to know to be very competent and safe in the lab. I found a used copy of the second edition that has served me well. I don't know what has been updated in the third edition.

I agree with /u/lmo2th Pauling has written albeit old but definitive books on chemistry. Although it can be very difficult to read and knowledge of differential equations is required, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry by Linus Pauling et al. was the most succinct book on the nitty gritty math of QM I found.

I recently graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry, it was difficult, but I loved every minute I spent in the lab doing research and can't imagine doing anything else. Edit: QED and Feynmann Lectures are great reads for lower division classes. Save the second two for if you decide on chemistry.

It's not a light read. it covers the core fundamentals of electrochemistry including mass transport, diffusion, and migration of charge at electrode interfaces, as well as, practical application of electrochemical techniques which include but aren't limited to polarography, cyclic volametry and other sweep/step techniques. The book focuses on the mathematical derivations of many important benchmark equations like cotrell and rendall-sevich which are used extensively. the proofs can be a bit challenging to follow without a decent background in calculus (diff. eq. helps too) but even if the derivations are lost, the important equations still hold true.

if you're looking for an introductory text for redox couples using electrochemistry you might be better off consulting a sophomoric text like Brown; Chemistry: The Central Science - Chapter 20 or Atkins' - Physical Chemistry - Chapter 7 & 25

don't hold me to those chapters... they could have changed from edition to edition.

Classes to consider should include:

• Math: up through partial differential equations. Many undergraduate programs in chemistry are happy to let you stop after taking multivariate calculus. But to get into the meat of quantum, PDEs is suggested.
  
  
• Chemistry: As /u/Kalivha said, computational chemistry, spectroscopy, solid state, and statistical mechanics. I'd go a step further and add inorganic chemistry to the list. You'll get a good smattering of MO theory, crystal lattice theory, and the like.
  
  
• Physics: a more intense variety of quantum mechanics would be offered in the physics department, so do check into this if you are semi-serious.
  
  
• Good texts: McQuarrie is a gold standard. My personal favorite is Atkins and de Paula's Physical Chemistry. They go into - in some places, at least - absurd detail, which tends to help people. For inorganic, look into Miessler and Tarr's Inorganic Chemistry.
  
  Happy hunting!

Organic chemistry 2 typically introduces many more reactions, but they don't really differ in terms of complexity. I would go over the old substitution and elimination reactions that you've learnt so far, but focus on why the reaction occurs where it does. The answer is often going to be at least one of:

• most acidic proton
  
  
• least steric hindrance
  
  
• most electron rich/poor
  
  
• a specific functional group
  
  I'd say the trickier thing that OC2 has plenty of is selectivity. For example, you might have two rather acidic protons, or two of the same functional group, but only one of them may react, and you need to justify why. Again, it goes back to the same basic criteria as before, just ranking one site differently from the other (e.g., maybe one functional group is a lot more hindered than the other one). But the concepts are all pretty much the same, so if you can understand why a reaction happens the way it does, then you've conquered a good chunk of the concepts. To help justify how a reaction works, maybe try taking the approach of explaining why a reaction doesn't happen elsewhere in the molecule.
  
  You'll have longer syntheses to deal with, but don't get intimidated, as they're just several reactions where the product of one reaction is the reactant for the next one. Since a reaction involves a main substrate (the key reactant), other reactants/reagents/conditions, and the product), the question might provide you with any two of those, and you'll need to determine the missing one, so maybe flip to an OC1 answer key and quickly cover up one of the questions without looking, and carefully reveal random parts of the question so you can try answering questions in different ways.
  
  This is a really good book for OC2, but it starts off at a reasonable level for someone who is good with the concepts of OC1. It may be worth checking out if your library has a copy.
  
  Edit: I also want to add on to not gloss over what makes something electron rich/poor, acidic, basic, et cetera. And remember to think in 3D, not getting stuck in the 2D paper world that OC is usually delivered in.

Email the school you'll be going to and ask them what books they use and if they know if they'll continue to use them when you attend, assuming you're going to be a chem major. Buy them and get to reading. If you get stuck on something look for help online, or I'm sure even a professor from the college would be happy to help.

For general chemistry we used this book and for ochem I am using this book. I think they're both pretty good.

Organic Chemistry by John McMurray is very very good if you haven't got it already, I had this before I got Clayden and I found it a little easier when starting off.

Also, if you feel like a challenge a great question book to get is: Designing Organic Synthesis by Stuart Warren. It's a question text book that teaches you how to break down large molecules into easily synthesizable subunits and is invaluble for any synthetic course.

Well, it depends. Are you interested only in applications, only in method development, or both? You don't necessarily study "computational chemistry", so if you can be more specific, it would help a lot.

It sounds like you're more interested in applications, and biochemical simulations can require many different techniques. Leach is a good start for textbook reading. I'd also start reading the peer-reviewed literature, specifically for joint experimental/computational papers. Biochemistry and Inorganic Chemistry have quite a few. Just saying "try this software and do XYZ thing" isn't very helpful.

It entirely depends on what you want to do. Everyone here so far is suggesting QM techniques, I use molecular dynamics for free energy simulations and algorithm development. If you are looking to use classical mechanics, i would suggest this and this.

Also a good understanding of Statistical Mechanics is a must, so check out this (google it). If you are looking for a free MD engine GROMACS and NAMD are free and would suggest on NAMD over GROMACS because the code seems to cut a lot of corners, but I use neither.

If this is more along the lines of what you are looking to do, feel free to pm me.

Are you local to your college or near it? Go browse through the library in the chemistry section and look for related materials/textbooks. They'll often have the same textbook from a year or two ago (so a few editions out of date) and they'll be good on concepts and the like.

Also just look for books that are useful and informative. I found a guide for the perplexed organic experimentalist in the library and it had a TON of great tips for organic synthesis that was never covered in any lab manual or textbook. And it was a fun read.

Browse the library, it has a TON of interesting resources that I wouldn't even begin to think to look for. The library saves my ass in research all the time because I'll track down a book that I didn't even know existed.

My p-chem professor recommended a book called Applied Mathematics to help with the math in the course. I haven't needed to use it just yet but I skimmed through it and it looks like a huge help. Maybe try that?

Edit: spelling

This book is excellent - great examples, clearly written and good progression.

Once you get to more advanced level, I would recommend supplementing with a copy of March -this is much more of a reference text than a book you would read, but very comprehensive http://www.amazon.com/Marchs-Advanced-Organic-Chemistry-Mechanisms/dp/0471585890

Ken Dill has the easiest to follow stat mech book I have encountered. McQuarrie has lots of good problems to work through. David Chandler is the shortest, and simultaneously most brilliant and difficult work on the subject I have read. His brief review of thermodynamics in the first couple chapters is fantastic if you only have a day or two to get back on the horse.

pihkal It's a great book. 1/2 love story and 1/2 organic chem and pharmacology.

The cartoon Guide to Chemistry by Larry Gonick. Yes, it looks like it is geared towards kids, but it is funny and makes chemistry very accessible!

https://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Guide-Chemistry-Larry-Gonick/dp/0060936770/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=cartoon+guide+to+chemistry&qid=1569849903&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Are they really concerned about people making these things at home? A lot of the chemicals you probably won't even be able to purchase without a license. A book that comes off the top of my head is PIHKAL which I'm pretty sure provides full procedures to synthesize all known phenethylamines and lists their corresponding physical effects; it isn't illegal.

EDIT: Grammar.

Also this one is pretty nice since you can work through it from the beginning to the end and afterwards you'll understand retrosynthesis.

You can find pdfs of it on the internet.

For pleasure:

• The Disappearing Spoon
  
• Periodic Tales
  
• Stuff Matters
  
• Molecules of Murder
  
• The Elements of Murder
  
• The Elements
  
• Molecules
  
• Molecules that Changed the World
  
• The Chemistry Book
  
  Undergraduate
  
  
• Organic:
  Organic Chemistry as a Second Language, The art of writing reasonable organic reaction mechanisms
  
  
• Inorganic: Inorganic Chemistry, Molecular Symmetry and Group Theory
  
  
• Analytical: Principles of Instrumental Anlsysis, Fundamentals of Analytical Chemistry
  
  Graduate
  
  
• Organic: Advanced Practical Organic Chemistry, March's Advanced Organic Chemistry, Greene's Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis, Purification of Laboratory Chemicals, Strategic Applications of Named Reactions in Organic Synthesis
  
• Inorganic: Advanced Inorganic Chemistry

Snyder and Dolans book is the best hands down for practical LC that ive come across

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Modern-Liquid-Chromatography-Snyder/dp/0470167548/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539197125&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3AJohn+W.+Dolan&dpID=41v7myfHeQL&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

David Klein also has a full textbook out this year. My prof uses it and I find it even better than organic chemistry as a second language. Obviously since it's a full textbook + answer manuel it will run you a fair bit more.

You're not clear about what you want to learn in chemistry -- do you want to do more practical stuff (organic synthesis / physical chemistry) or do you just want to know how molecules/atoms behave (organic chemistry ,biochemistry, physical chemistry , quantummechanics?

Wrt to doing synthesis 'on your own': these days, doing chemistry outside a lab is seen as something 'very dangerous', because only trrrrists and clandestine drug-making chemists are interested in chemistry.

The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler is a popular science novel about the discovery and development of the Haber-Bosch process for ammonium nitrate.

The Alchemy of Air is a fascinating book on the history of the Haber Process, and as geeky as it is: the beginning of the synthetic chemicals business is well detailed in Mauve and so is Napoleon's Buttons and anything by Joe Schwartz.

This is brilliant.

I particularly enjoyed "Molecular Orbitals and Organic Chemical Reactions" by Ian Fleming

Applied Mathematics for Physical Chemistry by James R. Barrante, has pretty much everything you're asking for.

link

Along with Engel/Reid the course I took required Applied Mathematics for Physical Chemistry which you can find used for pretty cheap. It gives you a basic rundown of mathematical concepts with examples relating to phys chem. Of course, if your school does pchem in the same sequence as mine (2 semesters intro pchem, quantum, and then spectroscopy), you'll only need multivariable calculus (cal 3) for the first 2 semesters. Differential equations is needed (and should be taken before) quantum.

Two good books to have would be:

For Organic: March's.

For Inorganic: Cotton and Wilkinson.

I've got this Primer, also from Clegg, I've found it's a good one:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crystal-Structure-Determination-Chemistry-Primers/dp/0198559011

Read Larry Gonick's Cartoon Guide to Chemistry like I did! You'll learn as much as a high school level course. www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Guide-Chemistry-Larry-Gonick/dp/0060936770

It's not free but maybe you can find it in your library

https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Orbitals-Organic-Chemical-Reactions/dp/0470746599

This book explains very well how to construct molecular orbitals, starting with H2, "H4", Methane,...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Organic-Synthesis-Disconnection-Stuart-Warren/dp/0470712368

I think this is the one I have, it's definitely by Warren anyway.

Edit:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-Organic-Syntheses-Programmed-Introduction/dp/0471996122

This is the one I have, you might have to shop around to find it a bit cheaper. I think I ended up with the Indian edition or something.

I've always found Atkins' Physical Chemistry to be fairly decent - and QM is one of his stronger areas.

The Hartree-Fock method builds molecular orbitals for a given molecule out of atomic orbitals of a given basis set. Depending on how much calculus you know, this project may be difficult, as it is more appropriate for a 3rd year university student. If you're still interested though, these two books and ppt should help:
linus pauling
Attila Szabo
An Introduction to Quantum Chemistry

Another idea you guys could look into is researching the chemistry of semiconductors in computer chips, how semiconductors work, and possibly look into the future of quantum computing (if there is one).

Sorry to take so long to get back to you.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen –
by Harold McGee

is the bible.

Also Modernist Cuisine

http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-Cooking/dp/0982761007

For organic chemistry, Vogel’s practical organic chemistry:

https://www.amazon.com/Vogels-Textbook-Practical-Organic-Chemistry/dp/0582462363

pihkal:

https://www.amazon.com/Pihkal-Chemical-Story-Alexander-Shulgin/dp/0963009605/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499568865&sr=8-1&keywords=phikal

About the math for chemists resource, there's a book called The Chemistry Maths Book that touches on most of the math you'll see in chemistry (from very basic arithmetic to calculus and statistics). It also has examples and is very concise.

For that kinda cash, I'd rather get this

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Crystallography-Dover-Books-Chemistry/dp/0486678393

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/X-Ray-Crystallography-2-e-Oxford-Chemistry-Primers/0198700970

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crystal-Structure-Determination-Chemistry-Primers/dp/0198559011

Note: make a search before asking, this question has been already posted and answered in this sub in the past.

This book sounds like what your looking for. Also, for more challenging problems check out Dave Evans' site for organic mechanism problems.

This recent Science paper by the Meyer group on decamethylferrocene dications! http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6300/678

Not sure it counts as 'Chemical Literature', but I'm also half way through the Chemistry Maths Book (https://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Maths-Book-Erich-Steiner/dp/0199205353). Regret not reading this properly back in my undergrad days.

The Elements of Murder!! Very concise background on all elements used in poisons

https://www.amazon.ca/Elements-Murder-History-Poison/dp/0192806009

E: it's talking about journal article. There was one I read earlier about recent advances crystallography... At work I'll link it later

First thing I'd recommend is a blog; More specifically, Derek Lowe's Things I won't work with. Read from the oldest to the newest. It's whimsical, funny, scary and fantastic.

Hager - The Alchemy of Air: About the Haber-Bosch process.

Coffey - Cathedrals of Science - Personalities and Rivalries That Made Modern Chemistry

TOC

1. The Ionists: Arrhenius and Nernst
   
2. Physical Chemistry in America: Lewis and Langmuir
   
3. The Third Law and Nitrogen: Haber and Nernst
   
4. Chemists at War: Haber, Nernst, Langmuir, and Lewis
   
5. The Lewis-Langmuir Theory: Lewis, Langmuir, and Harkins
   
6. Science and the Nazis: Nernst and Haber
   
7. Nobel Prizes: Lewis and Langmuir
   
8. Nuclear Chemistry: Lewis, Urey, and Seaborg
   
9. The Secret of Life: Pauling, Wrinch, and Langmuir
   
10. Pathological Science: Langmuir
    
11. Lewis’s Last Days 293
    
    Scerri - The Periodic Table - Its Story and Its Significance
    
    Kean - The Disappearing Spoon And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements 2010
    
    Le Couteur, Burreson - Napoleon's Button (Haven't read it but it gets recommended a bit)
    
    Jaffe - Crucibles - The Story Of Chemistry (haven't read this either but it seems to fit the biography bill)
    
    TOC
    
    
12. Bernard Trevisan (1406-1490)
    
13. Theoplirastus Paracelsus (1493-1541)
    
14. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)
    
15. Henry Cavendish (1731-1810)
    
16. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794)
    
17. John Dalton (1766-1844)
    
18. John Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848)
    
19. Friedrich Woehler (1800-1882)
    
20. Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendeleeff (1834-1907)
    
21. Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927)
    
22. Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934)
    
23. Joseph John Thomson (1856-1940)
    
24. Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887-1915)
    
25. Irving Langmuir (1881- )
    
26. Ernest Orlando Lawrence (1901- )
    
27. Men Who Harnessed Nuclear Energy
    
    Edit: There is also Ignition! John D. Clarke (link to bad quality pdf) which contains the following paragraph...
    
    > Chlorine trifluoride, ClF3 , or "CTF" as the engineers insist on calling it...is also quite probably the most vigorous fluorinating agent in existence - much more vigorous than fluorine itself...All this sounds fairly academic and innocuous, but when it is translated into the problem of handling the stuff, the results are horrendous. It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water - with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals - steel, copper, aluminum, etc. - because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes