Physics: Principles with Applications (5th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Good Book
Review: I am currently taking AP Physics B, and this textbook has become the enemy of mine and many of my classmates. For a intro to physics book, this book would be difficult to comprehend. The book does offer in-chapter examples, but the problems that are worked are straight-forward. However, the problems at the end of the chapters are hard and confusing. It does require thinking (which is a good thing), but some problems would take hours, literally, for the average physics student. The book does have answers to MOST odd number problems, not all. There is no solution to show how they arrived at the answer. The solution manual is a must to understand or to get started on hard problems. This book would be great for a physics student who understands the concepts and wants to enhance their knowledge with challenging problems. It is not a good book for people trying to understand physics.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing book
Review: I am currently taking AP Physics B, and this textbook has become the enemy of mine and many of my classmates. For a intro to physics book, this book would be difficult to comprehend. The book does offer in-chapter examples, but the problems that are worked are straight-forward. However, the problems at the end of the chapters are hard and confusing. It does require thinking (which is a good thing), but some problems would take hours, literally, for the average physics student. The book does have answers to MOST odd number problems, not all. There is no solution to show how they arrived at the answer. The solution manual is a must to understand or to get started on hard problems. This book would be great for a physics student who understands the concepts and wants to enhance their knowledge with challenging problems. It is not a good book for people trying to understand physics.

Rating:
Summary: Colorful Physics
Review: I am not majoring in Physics but its compulsory for first-years. I studied using this book for a year and found it interesting and enjoyable.
This book is also great for laymen in Physics. Just pick this up and forget for sometime novels and TVs

Rating:
Summary: Giancoli Physics Too Difficult and No Help!
Review: I am taking Physics II and using Giancoli's Physics fifth edition. The entire semester we have had dropout rate of about 85% from our class, and the reason is this book. There are no worked out solutions to any of the problems. The problems at the end of the chapters have no "frame of reference" back to the text. If you are trying to work something earnestly, there is no help at all. The Student Manual I purchased today gives absolutely no resonance with the text -- it simply restates things. There are no worked out solutions that conform to the questions at the backs of the chapters. We are all INTENSELY frustrated with this book. He could have done a better job. This book is way too difficult. I have seen other Physics curricula and this is the worst. We are all having a hard time with this book. It's sad because we are stuck using it.

Rating:
Summary: How to keep students away from physics
Review: I am taking physics NOW with THIS book. This is the worth science course I have ever taken. Thanks to this book! Studying physics with this book reminds me walking in the dark with my eyes closed. WHERE is the SOLUTION MANUAL??? Chemistry has become my favorite subject just because they had the SOLUTION MANUAL!!!

Rating:
Summary: A Beginner Physics Student's Review
Review: I had this book in my AP Physics B class. I and my friends all found it to be somewhat frustrating. The text is often hard to read and sleep-inducing, while not being very helpful at all in teaching the skills we needed in the class, or on the AP test. While a few of the diagrams were okay, most of the other diagrams and example problems were very confusing. The arbitrary way the equations are derived and spread all over the place makes it worse. This is not a book for the beginning student, especially if you don't have *very* good math and logic skills. Also, there were a lot of unneccessary info in the book, while not enough emphasis & elaboration is put on the more important aspects of basic physics. All in all, not a very good book for the beginning student.

Rating:
Summary: Physics
Review: I have studied physics using several different text books. Without question this is the most down to earth, easy to understand, user-friendly text I have come across. This is one of the few text books I have used that is actually written FOR a student and not to impress experts in the subject, other text book authors should take lessons from this book. I completed physics in a class that depended heavily on self study, this book not only made it easy but it was also pretty decent reading, not just a compilation of physics formulas and derivations. Anyone wanting a physics book you can actually make sense of, in my opinion, you can do no better than this.

Rating:
Summary: Tough, Demanding, Excellent
Review: I just completed an Advanced Placement (AP) Physics course atmy high school, using this book as our text. Although College-levelphysics is an extremely tough subject to comprehend, Douglas Giancoli does an excellent job in laying out the principals and applications of every aspect of the science. He starts with the basics: One and Two dimensional Kinematics, then moves on to cover Forces and Rotational motion, Gravitation, Torque, Momentum, Simple Harmonic Motion, Thermal Physics, Electricty and Magnetism, Relativity, Quantum and Nuclear Physics, and Astrophysics. Each chapter comes complete with practice questions and problems, and although they are sometimes incredibly difficult, they can be solved by using the information provided in the chapter, even though you sometimes have to extend the information one step further. The textbook has a companion website as well ..., complete with online questions and problems which made a great companion to the text. Occasionally throughout the year, we found a few errors in the text, and some of his explanations leave things to be desired, but overall it was a terrific textbook.

Rating:
Summary: NO SOLUTIONS MANUAL hinders learning of material
Review: I recently purchased Giancoli's Text and "Study Guide" (which is a waste of money) thinking that the study guide would include in-depth solutions. Not only did the study guide NOT contain any solutions (typically a "study guide" purchased in addition to a science text contains in-depth solutions), but there are NO in-depth solution guides available. Without consistent and reliable feedback, you cannot truly assess your learning. Therefore, steer clear of this text.

Rating:
Summary: A very frustrating book
Review: I took physics over the summer using this book and it was basically an awful experience. This book is orientated to the learning community as an introductory view to physics. The only requirement for this physics course I took was college algebra. I am a returning student, already having a B.S. degree. Having that platform, my review is this: This book is not the best learning model for learning physics at an introductionary level. MANY, MANY errors seem to surface with visual examples. For example, a visual representation of the directions of an magnetic field were incorrect. There are also many errors with the problem solving sections at the end of the book. In addition, there are also mathematical errors in the Solutions Manual for this book. It became very frustrating trying to learn the mathematical process when the solutions manual was incorrect. Also, the CD-Rom acompanying the book was not, based on my experience, a good learning tutorial. This book also contains too much jargon that might work for claculus based learners, but certainly not condusive for beginning learners. It appears that many hours of hard work went in to creating this book, and hopefully the author will take mine and others' considerations in its future revisions.