ScienceMan has reviewed MCH Multimedia products before - the general chemistry content is superb and presented in fine fashion. But now MCH has improved its already excellent interactive instruction to produce a real gem - Physical Chemistry.

The Physical Chemistry CD-ROM is an ideal companion to the Houghton Mifflin Physical Chemistry resource, but it also stands on its own as a fully featured chemistry study aide.

The first thing you will notice is the clear organization by logical chapter:

There is way too much content to cover in a single review - trust me, this CD covers every aspect of physical chemistry you would want to address in your regular high school or advance placement class, and would be no-brainer for the university classroom as well. So in order to get a look at the features and presentation, lets take a close look at one of the chapters - Electrochemical Cells:

You are first presented with an objectives screen - it is scrollable to show you every learning objective that is addressed by the section. You can then use the pull-down menu to choose the subsections:

• Electrochemical cells
• Reduction potentials
• Nernst equation
• Concentration cells

Choosing the Electrochemical cells subsection yields a clear animation with many interesting features:

The first thing that stands out is the extremely clear and well animated electrochemical cell. The following QuickTime movie also features the narration that you can choose - the audio on the CD is crystal clear and easy to listen to, any defects in the audio you may hear on this page are due to ScienceMan's poor ability to capture audio!

Clicking on different parts of the cell thoughtfully identifies and explains the parts. Scrollable text in the lower corner offers further explanation, and an "options" section in the other corner allows changes to the multimedia - in this case, the salt bridge in the cell can be removed to observe the effect. A speaker icon gives the user full control over the narration - there is no need to listen to any audio if you choose not to (excellent feature!)

If it is at any time unclear how one should proceed in an animation screen, you only have to press the "suggestions" to get pointers. As a bonus to those using the Physical Chemistry text, text info sections and text figures are also provided.

Really stuck? The CD also has a help screen to assist you.

So in summary, the Physical Chemistry CD would be an excellent choice as a study aide, especially for, but not limited to, those using the Physical Chemistry textbook.