ISBN053499928X

This is one of the poorest books I've ever used for learning any subject. This is simply NOT GOING TO WORK if you learn by reading/studying, rather than in class.

I already have a college degree, and I've read thousands of books, and studied from many. Rarely have I found a book this thick that has so little
1) EXPLANATION OF CORE CONCEPTS,
or
2) THOROUGHLY WORKED EXAMPLES OF PROBLEMS.

There is a lot of verbiage but that is all.

DO NOT WASTE TIME WITH THIS BOOK. Without a GOOD teacher, this book is beyond totally useless. With a teacher one can use this book for homework problems, but nothing more.

Since I am doing this as a pre-requisite for medical school, I am using the web and a number of other texts instead. I wish I could find a good thorough text though.

Do not waste your money on this textbook! Even the most basic concepts are poorly explained. Examples are random and rarely help to reinforce the lesson. You can find a much better physics book for a fraction of the price. I can't believe they published this book!!

I used this book for my physics class and I totally hate it. We will be using it again for next semester and I wish they would use a different one. If you are a teacher, please save your studernts from the headache! pick a better book!

I don't think this book explains concepts very well and it's even worse at teaching how to build on them. Some of the questions at the end of the chapter are very complex but, for people whose last supporting math class was years ago, the chapter often lacks thoroughly worked up examples to help figure out how to build the equation.

In the questions at the end of each chapter there are several problems that have on line coaching at the PHYSICS NOW web site, indicated by the PHYSICS NOW icon. Very often the problems that are indicated in the book are not the ones coached on line.

Volume 2 is published as a separate book but it is really the second half of volume 1. Many of the concepts in volume 2 are dependent on concepts, equations and other data presented in volume 1, but the book lacks an index containing this important information for those who took the first semester long enough ago to have sold the book. DO NOT BUY VOLUME 2 UNLESS YOU HAVE ACCESS TO A FIRST SEMESTER BOOK.

4-30-06

I used 7th ed vol. 2 for an online physics course and it wasn't a terrible book. Most of the stuff in here is not at all intuitive, so the nature of the subject matter itself is difficult. You need to work problems to get this stuff in your head, and you have to be self-motivated to study if you're doing an online course. One criticism I have is that the "PhysicsNow" is worthless. They provide no explanation on the website.

If you are reading this review and you need the book, I'll send you the one I have if I still have it. E-mail me at scott340pd@email.com if you're interested. Give me time to check my email account, because this is one I don't use often.