Chemistry: The Central Science 15th Edition ©2023

Chemistry: The Central Science, published by Pearson, introduces learners to modern chemistry and approaches chemistry with unrivaled problem sets, scientific accuracy and currency, and clarity.

  • Unrivaled problem sets, notable scientific accuracy, and contemporary relevance.
  • Further improvements to the Analyze, Plan, Solve, and Check problem-solving strategy.
  • Over 1000+ new self-assessment questions added.
  • This program is accompanied by the Pearson Mastering® platform with eText.
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AP Chemistry Program with Digital Integration

Pair innovation with insights from learning design and research to create an active, integrated, and easy-to-use framework.

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Develop Conceptual Understanding

Visualizing Concepts exercises help develop conceptual understanding of key chapter ideas using models, graphs and visual materials. 

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Consistent Problem Solving Approach

Analyze/Plan/Solve/Check is the unique problem-solving process used consistently throughout the text that guides students in practicing problem solving.

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Blended Instruction

Online components and resources help with instruction outside the classroom.

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Support for the AP Course

Chemistry: The Central Science supports College Board’s AP® Chemistry Course and Exam Description.

AP® Chemistry Teaching Solutions

  • Section Introductions
  • Learning Objectives
  • Digital Toolkit
  • Student Support
  • Learner Empowerment

Section Introductions

  • Relevant Materials
    The introductions highlight the relevance of upcoming material to students’ daily lives.
  • Oriented to the Future
    Insights into potential career paths help develop a future-oriented mindset. Bringing up other areas of interest opens new pathways for inquiry and student engagement.
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Learning Objectives

  • Objective Clarity
    The authors have rewritten the Learning Objectives for each chapter to be more student-friendly and easy to understand.
  • Fitting into the Big Ideas
    Clearly stating what students need to know fits the objectives into the broader Big Ideas that structure the entire course.
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Digital Toolkit

  • Learning Catalytics
    Learning Catalytics™ allows teachers to pose questions to students that can be answered from a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. Responses and metrics that gauge understanding arrive in real time. From there, teachers can adjust their instruction or set up peer groups to help keep students engaged and on track.
  • Dynamic Study Modules
    Dynamic Study Modules keep students engaged for effective learning. Question sets adapt to student performance. Personalized feedback, gamification, and intermittent rewards lead the way to mastering concepts.
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Student Support

  • Digital Study Area
    A new Study Area within Mastering Chemistry provides learners with resources designed to help them master the toughest topics in chemistry.
  • Developing Student Abilities
    Remediation is only suggested to students that perform poorly on the initial assessment. Tutorials, wrong-answer feedback, video instruction, and stepwise scaffolding help to build up students’ abilities.
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Learner Empowerment

  • Mobile-Optimized eText
    The Pearson eText is easy to use and mobile-optimized. Students can personalize their learning experience, highlight, take notes, and engage with embedded videos or rich media. They have access to the help they need when they need it.
  • Smart Figures
    Expanded Smart Figures turn static and complex in-text material into dynamic visual representations narrated by one of the authors. Students can access them through the eText, and teachers can assign them in Mastering Chemistry.
  • Mobile-Optimized eText
    The Pearson eText is easy to use and mobile-optimized. Students can personalize their learning experience, highlight, take notes, and engage with embedded videos or rich media. They have access to the help they need when they need it.
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Take a Deeper Look at Chemistry: The Central Science AP® Edition

Discover How Chemistry: The Central Science® Supports AP® Science Instruction

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Mastering® Chemistry from Pearson empowers teachers and students with its combination of powerful resources and user-friendly flexibility.

Test Prep for AP®

Available for purchase, the Test Prep Workbook for AP® Chemistry offers students a comprehensive AP Exam preparation guide directly linked to Pearson’s AP Edition textbook. This unique combination of text and workbook reinforces the important connections between what students learn in class and what is on the AP Exam.



Request an Exam Copy
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Correlation for AP®

Our solutions for AP® are designed to support and correlate the College Board's Course and Exam Descriptions for each corresponding course.

View Correlation

More About Chemistry The Central Science 15th Edition

  • Theodore L. Brown Author Bio
    Theodore L. Brown Author Bio
    Description: Theodore L. Brown received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1956. Since then, he has been a member of the faculty of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he is now Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus. He served as Vice Chancellor for Research, and Dean of The Graduate College, from 1980 to 1986, and as Founding Director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology from 1987 to 1993. Professor Brown has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1972 he was awarded the American Chemical Society Award for Research in Inorganic Chemistry and received the American Chemical Society Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry in 1993. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Chemical Society.

  • H. Eugene Lemay, Jr. Author Bio

     

    Description: H. Eugene Lemay, Jr., received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Pacific Lutheran University (Washington) and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1966 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He then joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is currently Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus. He has enjoyed Visiting Professorships at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at the University College of Wales in Great Britain, and at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor LeMay is a popular and effective teacher, who has taught thousands of students during more than 40 years of university teaching. Known for the clarity of his lectures and his sense of humor, he has received several teaching awards, including the University Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award (1991) and the first Regents’ Teaching Award given by the State of Nevada Board of Regents (1997).
  • Bruce E. Bursten Author Bio

    Bruce E. Bursten received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1978. After two years as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Texas A&M University, he joined the faculty of The Ohio State University, where he rose to the rank of Distinguished University Professor. In 2005, he moved to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Professor Bursten has been a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, and he is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society. At Ohio State he has received the University Distinguished Teaching Award in 1982 and 1996, the Arts and Sciences Student Council Outstanding Teaching Award in 1984, and the University Distinguished Scholar Award in 1990. He received the Spiers Memorial Prize and Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2003, and the Morley Medal of the Cleveland Section of the American Chemical Society in 2005. He was President of the American Chemical Society for 2008. In addition to his teaching and service activities, Professor Bursten’s research program focuses on compounds of the transition-metal and actinide elements.

  • Catherine J. Murphy Author Bio
     

    Catherine J. Murphy received two B.S. degrees, one in Chemistry and one in Biochemistry, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1986. She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1990. She was a National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 1990 to 1993. In 1993, she joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, becoming the Guy F. Lipscomb Professor of Chemistry in 2003. In 2009 she moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, as the Peter C. and Gretchen Miller Markunas Professor of Chemistry. Professor Murphy has been honored for both research and teaching as a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, a Cottrell Scholar of the Research Corporation, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award winner, and a subsequent NSF Award for Special Creativity. She has also received a USC Mortar Board Excellence in Teaching Award, the USC Golden Key Faculty Award for Creative Integration of Research and Undergraduate Teaching, the USC Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the USC Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award. Since 2006, Professor Murphy has served as a Senior Editor for the Journal of Physical Chemistry. In 2008 she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Murphy’s research program focuses on the synthesis and optical properties of inorganic nanomaterials, and on the local structure and dynamics of the DNA double helix.

  • Patrick M. Woodward Author Bio

    Patrick M. Woodward received B.S. degrees in both Chemistry and Engineering from Idaho State University in 1991. He received a M.S. degree in Materials Science and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Oregon State University in 1996. He spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the Chemistry Department at The Ohio State University where he currently holds the rank of Professor. He has enjoyed visiting professorships at the University of Bordeaux in France and the University of Sydney in Australia. Professor Woodward has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award winner. He currently serves as an Associate Editor to the Journal of Solid State Chemistry and as the director of the Ohio REEL program, an NSF-funded center that works to bring authentic research experiments into the laboratories of first- and second-year chemistry classes in 15 colleges and universities across the state of Ohio. Professor Woodward’s research program focuses on understanding the links between bonding, structure, and properties of solid-state inorganic functional materials.

  • Matthew W. Stoltzfus Author Bio

     

    Matthew W. Stoltzfus received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Millersville University in 2002 and his Ph. D. in Chemistry in 2007 from The Ohio State University. He spent two years as a teaching postdoctoral assistant for the Ohio REEL program, an NSF-funded center that works to bring authentic research experiments into the general chemistry lab curriculum in 15 colleges and universities across the state of Ohio. In 2009, he joined the faculty of Ohio State where he currently holds the position of Chemistry Lecturer. In addition to lecturing general chemistry, Stoltzfus accepted the Faculty Fellow position for the Digital First Initiative, inspiring instructors to offer engaging digital learning content to students through emerging technology. Through this initiative, he developed an iTunes U general chemistry course, which has attracted over 120,000 students from all over the world. Stoltzfus has received several teaching awards, including the inaugural Ohio State University 2013 Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Lecturer and he is recognized as an Apple Distinguished Educator.

  • Brief Table of Contents

    PREFACE xxi

    1 Introduction: Matter, Energy, and Measurement 1

    2 Atoms, Molecules, and Ions 41

    3 Chemical Reactions and Reaction Stoichiometry 85

    4 Reactions in Aqueous Solution 119

    5 Thermochemistry 161

    6 Electronic Structure of Atoms 211

    7 Periodic Properties of the Elements 255

    8 Basic Concepts of Chemical Bonding 297

    9 Molecular Geometry and Bonding Theories 335

    10 Gases 391

    11 Liquids and Intermolecular Forces 431

    12 Solids and Modern Materials 469

    13 Properties of Solutions 521

    14 Chemical Kinetics 565

    15 Chemical Equilibrium 621

    16 Acid–Base Equilibria 661

    17 Aqueous Equilibria: Buffers, Titrations, and Solubility 713

    18 Chemistry of the Environment 763

    19 Chemical Thermodynamics 799

    20 Electrochemistry 839

    21 Nuclear Chemistry 891

    22 Chemistry of the Nonmetals 933

    23 Transition Metals and Coordination Chemistry 977

    24 The Chemistry of Life: Organic and Biological Chemistry 1021

    APPENDICES

    A Mathematical Operations 1069

    B Properties of Water 1076

    C Thermodynamic Quantities for Selected Substances

    at 298.15 K 125 C2 1077

    D Aqueous Equilibrium Constants 1081

    E Standard Reduction Potentials at 25 C 1083

    ANSWERS TO RED EXERCISES A-1

    ANSWERS TO EXAM PREP QUESTIONS A-28


    GLOSSARY G-1

    PHOTO AND ART CREDITS P-1


    INDEX I-1

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