College Inorganic Chemistry (B.Sc. Second Year) — A Book That Has Aged Like Fine Reagent
Every B.Sc. chemistry student hits a wall somewhere around the second year. Inorganic chemistry suddenly stops being about memorising periodic trends and turns into a subject demanding real structural reasoning. College Inorganic Chemistry, the book we're looking at here, is built precisely for that transition.
First published in 1978, it has now reached its twenty-fifth edition (2018), with reprints running into 2020. That kind of longevity in the Indian textbook market is rare, and it tells you something: generations of students and teachers have kept coming back to it. The current edition follows the CBCS revised syllabus prescribed by the University of Mumbai, effective from the academic year June 2017.
Who This Book Is Really For
The straightforward answer: B.Sc. second year students following the Mumbai University CBCS pattern. The realistic answer is a little broader. Because the inorganic chemistry syllabus across Indian universities shares the same backbone — chemical bonding, p-block elements, transition metals, coordination chemistry — students from other state and central universities will find nearly everything they need inside. Minor reordering of units is usually the only adjustment required.
That makes it a dependable single reference even if your university isn't Mumbai. A student in Pune, Nagpur, or Delhi preparing for semester exams can treat this as a primary text without hunting for three different books.
What Sets It Apart
Plenty of inorganic texts explain what hybridisation is. Few take the trouble to walk through why certain hybrid orbitals form and how they shape real molecules. This book spends serious effort on sp, sp2, sp3, sp3d, sp2d, sp2d2, and sp3d2 types — including the genuinely tricky sp2d and sp2d2 cases, which the authors admit are rare and not fully understood, yet attempt to explain in the clearest possible way.
The wave mechanical treatment of H2+ and H2 using the Schrödinger equation is presented in simplified form rather than left as abstract theory. For students intimidated by quantum chemistry, that simplification matters. Molecular orbital theory, bond order, and magnetic behaviour are illustrated through concrete references like O2, O2+, O2–, and O22–, so the concepts stick.
What also stands out is the coordination chemistry section. The introduction of sd3 and d3s hybridisation — topics many textbooks gloss over — shows the authors' intention to keep pace with modern developments rather than recycle older formulations.
A Look at the Index
The book is split across Semesters III and IV, covering two papers each. Here's the full chapter map with page references.
| Semester | Paper | Chapter / Topic | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| III | I | Chemical Bonding | 1–106 |
| Non-directional Bonding (Ionic Bond) | 1–21 | ||
| Directional Bonding — Orbital Approach (Covalent Bond) | 22–73 | ||
| Molecular Orbital Theory | 74–106 | ||
| III | II | Selected Topics on p-Block Elements | 107–144 |
| Chemistry of Boron Compounds | 107–119 | ||
| Chemistry of Silicon and Germanium | 120–130 | ||
| Chemistry of Nitrogen Family | 131–144 | ||
| IV | I | Comparative Chemistry of the Transition Metals | 145–178 |
| Coordination Chemistry | 179–219 | ||
| IV | II | Ions in Aqueous Medium | 220–242 |
| Uses & Environmental Chemistry of Volatile Oxides and Oxo-acids | 243–260 |
Each chapter ends with a set of questions, including objective-type problems. That detail shouldn't be underestimated — for CBCS-style internal assessments and semester exams, practice questions aligned to the syllabus are worth their weight in gold.
The Teaching Behind the Pages
Five authors have contributed, all experienced professors and heads of chemistry departments across Mumbai colleges — K.J. Somaiya, Mithibai, Bhavan's, Maharshi Dayanand, and N.E.S. Ratnam. That collective classroom experience shows in the pacing. Difficult topics like the Born-Haber cycle, radius ratio rules, Latimer's equation for cation acidity, and the origin of colour in transition metal compounds are laid out step by step rather than dumped onto the page.
The transition metals chapter deserves special mention. Variable oxidation states, the stability of d0, d5, and d10 configurations, magnetic properties expressed in Bohr magnetons, and qualitative tests for ions like chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, and copper — all are handled with the depth a second-year student actually needs.
Should You Use It?
If your syllabus maps even loosely to the Mumbai University CBCS structure, this book does the job. The explanations are lucid, the coverage is complete for both semesters, and the questions give you something to test yourself against. For students outside Mumbai, a quick comparison with your own syllabus will likely confirm that the core topics match — coordination chemistry, bonding theories, and p-block chemistry are universal second-year fare.
Twenty-five editions over four decades is not a marketing accident. Teachers trust it because it works. Students keep it because the explanations hold up under exam pressure.