Help a Physics grad read up on Chemistry

[Zoroaster]

Hi all,

I am a grad student with a Physics BSc. For various reasons, I have never actually done a basic pure chemistry course, even at high school level. Naturally, I have come across many concepts from chemistry in my courses, but I lack the fundamental overview of the field, and I am very shaky on many of the basic terms and concepts. I therefore decided that I need to look into basic [sic] chemistry. I'm hoping that someone here might be of assistance in deciding on some learning materials.

I am hoping to find something else than a standard chemistry undergraduate book. As a grad student, I don't have oceans of time to devote to this (sadly), but I'm not looking for anything sugarcoated that risks going on behalf of scientific accuracy either. Ideally, a short, well written book introducing the fundamental concepts would be great (asking quite a lot here, I know).

Any suggestions?

Thanks a bunch

 

[mindheavy]

General Chemistry - Linus Pauling

 

[xristy]

couple of Atkins' texts

A calculus based honors introduction to chemistry: Chemical Principles and the upper division Molecular Quantum Mechanics are up-to-date and worth looking at. Neither is short but they don't sugar coat and you can skip around.

 

[Lavabug]

General Chemistry - Linus Pauling

As a former student of chemistry who switched to physics, I second this. I consider it the Halliday-Resnick of chemistry.

 

[Zoroaster]

Thanks a lot guys, excellent advice. I've ordered the Pauling book and will have a look at the other ones in the library.