I used the primers for some other courses, an x-ray crystallography course, and a symmetry/group theory course, but have not used them for an inorganic course.  I have always thought it would be an interesting way to teach a course, but haven't had the courage to try it.  One problem with the books is they are pretty basic, and don't have a lot of problems in them (any?).  I have also looked at the RSC tutorial texts, which are a bit more advanced, have questions at the end of chapters, and are more recent. 

Adam

We have a sophmore level inorganic course for which I have never found a good text (and I was pretty unhappy with making students spend big bucks for a book that really is not appropriate for our course). Three years ago I tried using the Chemical Bonding, Periodicity in the s- and p-Block Elements, and d-Block Chemistry primers. Additionally, I used on-line tutorials for symmetry (not group theory). We use Silberberg as the gen chem book and it has a good chapter on coordination chemistry (that we never cover in the gen chem course) that I use a starting point and then supplement it with the primer.  Likewise, I use the gen chem book to begin talking about atomic structure, periodicity, and bonding (simple m.o.) and phase into the primers. 

The periodicity primer didn't work well for me and I dropped it last year. I did pick up an MIT Open Coursework unit on "Bonding in Metals, Semiconductors and Insulators - Band Structure."  That seemed to work well.

As our course follows gen chem, I think using the gen chem text to begin topics is a reasonable approach given the amount of material in the text that we never cover. The fact that gen chem texts are well written and contain quite a few problems is also a plus.

I don't think I could rely on the primers as the only texts, but I am reasonably happy with them as I am using them. (You do need to provide problems, but I have not found that to be a big drawback.)

Hi Everyone!

I'm just rediscovering VIPEr again.  Wish we had had such a forum, particularly during those days when I was just getting started at Muskingum and Allegheny Colleges.  Given Dan Freedman's 2008 post I thought I would just note that a third edition of my book is now out.  You can find information about it at

http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?N=+16+4294922413+4294967052&Ntk=P_Isbn13&Ntt=9780840068460

For those of you not in Canada or the US, there is an international edition.  Information about that can be found at

http://edu.cengage.co.uk/catalogue/product.aspx?isbn=1111427151

As usual, I would welcome any and all feedback about the book.  We used many such comments in moving from the 2e to the 3e (see the preface of the 3e for the extensive changes made in writing the 3e).

Glen

We have a one semester course in general chemistry that is followed by the organic sequence. In the 4th semester, students take my "physical inorganic" course where I cover some material that we don't get to in general chemistry (mostly some thermo and kinetics). The remainder of the course is basically intermediate inorganic. In the past I've used Rayner-Canham and Overton, but decided  I needed a change. For the first time this Spring I am trying a combination of two Oxford Primers ( Foundations of Inorganic Chemistry by Winter and Andrew and d-Block Chemistry by Winter) with the text the students have from general chemistry (Moore Stanitiski, and Jurs). I'll follow-up as to how this approach works and would also love to hear some experiences from others that might have tried something similar.

Jeff