Free General Chemistry Textbooks

An Introduction to Chemistry by Mark Bishop. There are two versions of this current textbook, both containing the same information but organized differently: the "Chemistry-first" version begins with actual "chemistry" — that is, chemical equations and reactions.  The alternative "Atoms-first" format saves this stuff for later, and begins with atomic theory and bonding. To download PDF versions,  select Chemistry-First or Atoms-First. Please note that although you may download these for free, Mark asks that those who make regular use of them pay a shareware fee of $20. Individual chapters for iPad, iPhone, Android devices and Kindle are also available: Chemistry-First, Atoms-First.

JCE "Living textbooks for Chemistry" - This project appears to have largely fizzled out soon after it started, and is now part of the Chemical Education Digital Library. About the only "textbook"-style item  presently available is John S. Hutchinson's Concept Develpment Studies in Chemistry, It is well-done, solid stuff but visually blahh. Available in PDF, ePUB and zip formats.  A Braille-printable version is separately available.

Merlin's Principles of Alchemy is a chemistry hypertextbook in the form of a large set of HTML files that users download and then view with their Web browsers off-line. It is organized in an interesting way, and is intended to support users having a wide range of backgrounds and capabilities, including home-schoolers and adult learners. There is a nominal charge for downloading the material.

Chemical Principles (CK-12 foundation; Sharon Bewick, Johathan Edge, Therese Forsythe, Richard Parsons)  This Creative-Commons-licensed work comes in the form of single humongus 900-page, 51Mb pdf file; download.

Archive of freely dowloadable textbooks - these are mostly entry-level textbooks from an unnamed publisher who offered these for free download under a Creative Commons licence up through 2012.  (From 2013 on, texts from this publisher were no longer free, but the CC license is still valid for the earlier editions.) The only Chemistry title is Principles of General Chemistry by Bruce Averill and Patricia Eldredge, but other titles on this list may be of interest to home schoolers and teachers in countries where textbooks are unavailable or unaffordable.

Chemistry Books Online has offerings in many areas of Chemistry, but as with most similar sites, its offerings are something of a dog's breakfast of old and obscure, but with the occasional gem.

Free Chemistry e-Books Online - Links to an extensive collection of materials at their origonal sources, varying from lecture outlines to more complete tutorials, organized into 24 areas of Chemistry.  These are of highly variable quality, but there are likely to be a few usefu finds here.

The Library of Congress has an extensive set of links to Chemstry titles arranged by catalog number, including numerous rare classics from the 19th Century and earlier.

{A 19th Century Chemistry Textbook} - If you are curious about how Chemistry was taught over 100 years ago see this indexed text of "Elementary Chemistry for Science Schools and Classes" by Robert Avey Ward. (Link is to last archived version, Feb 2006.)

Project Gutenberg offers free eBooks on Chemistry —  Unfortunately, the listings do not show the publication dates, but since this is all public domain stuff, you can expect many to be quite old or obscure( Watson Smith's The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing,  for example.) But there are some classics: Faraday's The Chemical History of a Candle, Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry, Robert Boyle's The Skeptical Chymist.

Other General Chemistry stuff

Notes on General Chemistry - These PDF files by Dan Dill of Boston U. cover various topics including quantum theory, thermodynamics-kinetics and chemical equilibrium.

General Chemistry Notes - this commercial site offers PDF downloads of sets of detailed "lecture notes" based on a survey of contemporary textbooks.  Each set covers one of twenty topics in first- or second-semester General Chemistry, and consists of an outline followed by multiple pages of lecture-type notes displayed in faux handwritten style. Free previews of each section are available.

General Chemistry Notes - According to the blurb on this commercial site, these note are "written by actual chemistry professors [and are] designed to combine both a student's lecture notes AND textbook materials into one easy-to-read and easy-to-understand format. When one downloads the entire set, 14-page samples of notes for each topic can be viewed without charge.

The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements - This PBS video " is an exciting three-part series about one of the great adventures in the history of science: the long and continuing quest to understand what the world is made of. Three hour-long episodes tell the story of seven of history’s most important scientists as they seek to identify, understand and organize the basic building blocks of matter."

Analytical chemistry

Analytical Chemistry 2.0 - A free eText (pdf file) version of the textbook Modern Analytical Chemisty originally published by McGraw-GHukk ub 1999. The original text has been re-edited and provided with numerous new illustrations and cross-links.

Organic Chemistry

Organic Chemistry eBook - Daley & Daley is the only introductory level Organic Chemistry text organized by mechanisms rather than functional groups. It was written from the ground up to simplify learning Organic Chemistry.

Organic Chemistry WikiBook - "This free online text is intended to become a complete replacement for your printed book."

Physical Chemistry

Thermodynamics and Chemistry, 2nd Edition (Howard DeVoe, U of Maryland) - intended for a one-semester course in classical chemical thermodynamics.

Physical Chemstry (Walter Moore, 1970s?) A classic P. Chem book from an excellent author/teacher, available in multiple formats including Kindle, but layout similar to GoogleBooks - i.e. not very pretty.

Esoterica

{Electronic Textbooks: A Pilot Study of Student E-Reading Habits} - an article by Eric J. Simon of Fordham College. (Link is to last archived update, 10/2006.)

The Library of Congress has an extensive set of links to Chemstry titles arranged by catalog number, including numerous rare classics from the 19th Century and earlier.

{A 19th Century Chemistry Textbook} - If you are curious about how Chemistry was taught over 100 years ago see this indexed text of "Elementary Chemistry for Science Schools and Classes" by Robert Avey Ward. (Link is to last archived version, Feb 2006.)

Project Gutenberg offers free eBooks on Chemistry —  Unfortunately, the listings do not show the publication dates, but since this is all public domain stuff, you can expect many to be quite old or obscure Watson Smith's The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing,  for example.) But there are some classics: Faraday's The Chemical History of a Candle, Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry, Robert Boyle's The Skeptical Chymist.

Note: see the section that follows this one for MIT and Berkeley online lectures.

The Flipped Learning Network - brings together a number of resources, sites, and events relating to the current "latest thing" in Chemistry education.

The Flipped Classroom - Part of the Flipped Learning Network described above, this site provides useful information about creating and using vodcasting.

The "Flipped" Classroom - an article in the November 2012 DivCHED CCCE newsletter, describing the use of video/screen capturing technology to capture content rich lectures, making them student homework.  As a result, formal lecture time in the classroom is drastically reduced, allowing for more laboratories, demonstrations, problem-based learning, etc. to be introduced without sacrificing precious instructional time to lecturing.

The Flipped Learning Network - The flippedlearning.org site offers a variety of resources on this topic of growing interest.

Fifty resources for using educational technology in the classroom - A ZDNet roundup of educational articles, apps and tutorials for educators looking to integrate technology into the classroom.

Screencasts in education - A series of 11 YouTube video tutorials on how to make educational screencasts. (Dept of Chemical and Biological Engineering, U of Colorado.)

Welcome to Educational Vodcasting! - "This site is devoted to teaching educators how to use podcasts and vodcasts to increase student achievement. This is the brainchild of Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams who are pioneers in the field of using vodcasts in the classroom. They have devised a new method of teaching called Pre-Vodcasting. In this model, students watch vodcasts at home and class time is spent in engaging hands-on activities and directed problem solving."

Chemistry Screencasts is a collection of mini-lectures on various chemistry topics with pictures and sound by Mark Ott of Jackson (MI) Community College — an interesting example of online multimedia in chemistry education. You have a choice of first-semester and second-semester topics.

Michelle Francl of Bryn Mawr College has prepared an extensive set of blogs, webcasts and podcasts. Some of these support first- and second year courses, others are for a wider, non-technical audience. All are thoughtful and engaging examples of ways to make Chemistry more interesting, and of how non-traditional media can be incorporated into a course. Some of the more interesting collections include Culture of Chemistry (>): The Who, What, When, Where and Why of Chemistry, and Chemistry 104 Lecture summaries.

Introduction to Quantum Chemistry - Audio feeds of a series of 31 lectures by Michelle Franci of Bryn Mawr College, available for free on iTunes. Franci's titles are always intriguing: Why are Cheetos orange and flamingos pink? Why do they call it "burning" a CD? Are pi orbitals real?

Distance Education Clearinghouse website at the University of Wisconsin offers articles, bibliographies, conferences, distance education web links and many additional resources.

Chemistry video podcasts on many topics by Richard Meagher of Mt Lawley Senior High School.

MIT Principles of Chemical Science - Fall 2008 - This MIT OpenCourseWare course provides an introduction to the chemistry of biological, inorganic, and organic molecules. The emphasis is on basic principles of atomic and molecular electronic structure, thermodynamics, acid-base and redox equilibria, chemical kinetics, and catalysis.

UC - Berkeley offers online video and audio lectures for many of its courses, including first-year General Chemistry: Unfortunately, these are not indexed by topic. Some of the series currently available:
Chem 1A (General Chemistry): Fall 2011 (Angelica Stacy, Michelle Douskey), Spring 2012 (Heino Nitsche, Chunmai Li)
Chem 3B (Chemical Structure and Reactivity): Fall 2011 (Peter Vollhardt)

CMU on-line Chemistry course - as part of an "Open Learning Initiative", Carnegie Mellon University offers what appears to be a demonstration course on chemical stoichiometry that illustrates several innovative approaches, including a simulation-based Virtual Laboratory. The "open and free" version is available to anyone; an Academic Version is also available that can be used in connection with existing courses.

Online Chemistry & Lab Courses - Oregon State U. now offers "Ecourses" in General-, Organic-, and Inorganic Chemistry.

> MIT Kitchen Chemistry course - This course, given in 2006 by Patricia Christie, was designed to be an experimental and hands-on approach to applied chemistry (as seen in cooking). The materials are available by download.

ChemWiki - This site (at UC-Davis) offers an Open Textbook environment for topics beyond General Chemistry, such as physical, inorganic, and analytical chemistry.

An Introduction to Chemistry - (MindBites) A commercial product from Thinkwell, this extensive series consists of over 300 lessons (totaling 52 hours) which can be watched online or downloaded. The entire set costs $200, but individual lessons can be obtained for $2.

 "Educator" Chemistry video lectures - Educator markets video lectures on a wide variety of subjects including most of the sciences, but ranging as far as computer software and music theory. These are done by experienced teachers and are organized into general topics, each divided into as many as 20 subtopics running from 3 to 50 minutes each.  The current (2014) Chemistry offerings, mostly college level, include the following:

 "Chemistry Professor" Video lectures - A series of college-level course segments coverering general- and organic chemistry, using a mixture of narrated video, animation and PowerPoint presentations.  Done by Sandra Etheridge, a long-time community college teacher.  (Dr. Etheridge also has a number of YouTube videos.)

Chemistry tutorial series on YouTube and other video collections - a summary of the major collections, including the Khan Academy, and those done by various teachers, mostly at the high school level.

ChemTube3D from the University of Liverpool contains interactive 3D animations and structures, with supporting information for some of the most important topics covered during an undergraduate chemistry degree. There are sections covering A-level (high school), organic reactions, structure and bonding, polymers and inorganic chemistry. It can be viewed in a Web browser, or on smart phones and tablets.

Alkali metals in water - Demonstrates the reactions of Li, Na, K, Rb and Cs with water - UTube ****

Bromine and alcohol - "Here's an example of what happens when you mix BROMINE and alcohol." ***

Chemistry Video Tutorials - A large collection of short YouTube videos on Chemistry topics by high school teacher Mark Rosengarten. (This link leads to a YouTube piece on voltaic cells; to see the complete list, click on "Accelerated/Enriched Chmistry" in the right-hand panel.)

Chemistry Lecture DVDs - this commercial site offers video DVD's containing an entire year of lectures for courses in high-school and AP chemistry. Individual lecture video podcasts (MP4 format) are also available.

Free Online Stoichiometry Course from the Carnegie Mallon ChemCollective

Contemporary Chemistry Multimedia Project - This site has a large collection animations, some quite good. In its present state, navigation is a bit awkward, and I consider it more useful as a source of ideas and links than as something for students to go through on their own.

Frostbite Theater - a collection of science videos relating to liquid nitrogen and electrostatics produced by Jefferson Lab, a U.S. Dept of Energy facility.

Glassware and Apparatus Videos - show students the best way to assemble glass jointware. A variety of different examples are provided, with variations that demonstrate some of the more complicated assemblies that are often used in inorganic synthesis. Includes reflux, vacuum distillation, various three-necked flasks setups. This is one component of the VIPEr project for inorganic chemistry education.

101science.com - Chemistry - This page of hodge-podge contains a "comprehensive list of free chemistry videos" about 1/10 of the way down.

The Khan Academy is a remarkable and ambitious non-commercial undertaking that offers over 1600 free Science-related videos (via YouTube), including a sizeable number devoted to Chemistry. The videos I have looked at are basically animated blackboard talks. The talks themselves are exceptionally well presented, and amount to short mini-lectures that can be quite effective. See this interesting video of Salman Khan describing the origin, nature, and future directions of this series.

Chemistry Screencasts is a collection of mini-lectures on various chemistry topics with pictures and sound by Mark Ott of Jackson (MI) Community College. You have a choice of first-semester and second-semester topics.

Molecular Movies - "A portal for cell and molecular animation" - these excellent videos include organic reaction mechanisms, solids and polymerizations.

Organic Chemistry Reaction Mechanisms and Stereochemistry - This rather crudely-constructed Web site from Massey U. (New Zealand) currently offers eight videos on such topics as nucleophilic and electrophilic substitutions, the aldo reactions and the Claisen reaction.

Organic Chemistry Music Video "Resistant to Base" - "An organic chemistry-themed music video parodying Robert Palmer's 1985 "Addicted to Love." *

Shakhashiri Video DVD - Contains 49 of Bassam Shakhashiri's well known chemical demonstration videos.

SciTalks - Chemistry-related video lectures (many of them Nobel lectures).

SlideShare - the Chemistry section of a site at which users can upload and download PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote or OpenOffice presentations (See Wikipedia description).  One of the more useful examples of these is Gareth Rowland's Layman's Introduction to Chirality in Chemistry.

The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements - This PBS video " is an exciting three-part series about one of the great adventures in the history of science: the long and continuing quest to understand what the world is made of. Three hour-long episodes tell the story of seven of history’s most important scientists as they seek to identify, understand and organize the basic building blocks of matter." 

Hunting the Elements - A Two-hour PBS/NOVA video. "Where do nature's building blocks, called the elements, come from? They're the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, technology columnist and lively host of NOVA's popular "Making Stuff" series, spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe's most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare—substances cooked up in atom smashers that flicker into existence for only fractions of a second." Note: this video is not viewable in Canada (and possibly in other countries) owing to stupid "rights" issues.

Create a TED-Ed Lesson using any TEDTalk - - "TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading." It presents high-quality videos on a multiplicity of topics, with only a few relating to Chemistry. This page shows how teachers can create their own lessons around an existing TedTalk. These lessoncan include "multiple choice questions, open-answer questions, and materials that support a student to dig even deeper into the topic, can be viewed in full on ed.ted.com."  Current list of Chemistry-related TED videos.

The Periodic Table of Videos - click on an element, and watch a two-minute video from U. of Nottingham that describes the element and its uses.

"Water-as-fuel" - "Stan Meyer developed a water "splitter" that separates hydrogen from oxygen, and burns the hydrogen as fuel in an internal combustion engine." Sure!