Spectrum Chemistry vs. Jay Wile's

[ofthevine]

Spectrum Chemistry vs. Jay Wile's Discovering Design with Chemistry: Which would you choose and why?

Background info: My son currently desires to become a doctor (family physician or genetic counselor). He has completed Rainbow Science and will take Biology the following year with our co-op. He has completed Algebra I. Chemistry would be completed at home.

[LAS in LA]

No experience with either of those, but we like Novare Science for rigor and Christian outlook. www.classicalacademicpress.com 

(I seem to be recommending Novare in every thread this evening! 😁)

[RootAnn]

I had a kid use Spectrum Chem in an online class after going through the first year of Rainbow. Spectrum is written like Rainbow -- or even more briefly. The learning is in the labs from what I understand. The online class supplemented extensively because some kids could not learn from what little was in the text. The teacher did a great job explaining the material; I don't know how many would otherwise have given up. I like the text but caution you that you may have to answer some questions and/or your kid might have to seek out some additional explanations.

[mom31257]

I have no experience with Spectrum chemistry, but I love Dr. Wile's chemistry books. I taught dd his second edition book in high school, and she went on to have a 97 average in her college chemistry class for her nursing degree. I am currently teaching his latest edition you mentioned above. 

I believe the explanations are thorough and easy to understand. He has a link in the textbook to a resource page with tons of helpful videos over the concepts as well as extra practice problems with solutions. 

He taught college chemistry again before writing this third edition, and that experience gave him a lot of good insight on the best order of the topics. 

[Momto6inIN]

I don't have any experience with Spectrum, but we've used all of Dr Wile's book for my teens and they prepped my 2 oldest who are currently in college well.

[Penelope]

Of those two, I would choose Wile’s curriculum. I don’t think Spectrum has enough explanation or examples. Like RootAnn said, I think teaching would need to be heavily supplemented to provide a good experience. I also think it would benefit from more practice problems. It does have nice labs.
 

[klmama]

Since he'll want a really solid foundation in chemistry, I'd choose Wile.  He can get quite wordy at times, particularly compared to Spectrum, but he's very thorough.  

[JumpyTheFrog]

We started with Spectrum Chemistry this year, but found it had about 10% of the amount of practice problems needed. I tried to use other chemistry workbooks to supplement, but since each book taught chemistry topics in a different order it was taking too much time to try to coordinate things. I finally bought Holt's Modern Chemistry book used for about $15 on Amazon and spent $40 for the online access which gives us worksheets, study guides, quizzes, and tests for each chapter. We will keep using the Spectrum lab kit, though.