Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book, explains concepts well
Review: This book is written very well and it fully analyzes the concepts. I am currently using it in an online Physics class and it is doing fine. The problems at the end may seem harder than the ones in the chapters BECAUSE THEY REQUIRE YOU TO THINK. Some of the reviews here make it seem like Physics is just writing random number or something. This book explains the concepts and then let's you think with problems. Half the questions have solutions in the back!Seriously, this book is great for learning Physics. Giancoli really explains all the topics well and this is a great choice for any Physics class. I just don't see how all these people can have so much hate towards it...
Rating: 
Summary: Missing the Point
Review: This is a long review, but I'd appreciate it if you would invest your time in it anyways. This book was obviously not written for self-study. It is, in my view, meant to be used as a resource along with many others. I have read all of the reviews on here and it seems that almost everyone who is complaining is a student with a bad teacher or an individual trying to use this book without help, and most who are complimenting have the point of view of people who are well-learned in physics and are using this text to aid their teaching. The greatest downfall of this book is, as has been pointed out by many others, that the problems in each chapter are much harder than any of the explanations or examples. The reason for this difference in difficulty level, I believe, is that Giancoli wants to promote learning Physics, not regurgitating it. Not that there is anything wrong with merely reading and then applying what you've read, but when you discover the more detailed aspects and most intriguing applications of the subject matter by yourself, not only does it keep you interested but it gives you a whole new outlook on physics, science, and life in general. I have been using this book in an AP Physics class for a few months now, and I am amazed how much it has warped my thinking. The explanations in Giancoli's text are so well-presented, so down-to-earth, that I can't help thinking about applications of what I have learned everywhere I go. While I walk on conrete I think friction, friction, friction on each step. I think about what I have learned in class while I push furniture, try to stay warm in the cold winter air, toss trash into a trashcan, try to hold a door closed during a bout of sibling rivalry, and why my ice cream floats in my rootbeer float. To get full use out of this book you really need someone to help you understand it all, to show you the solutions to problems, and to help fill in holes in the conceptual explanations. Maybe a solutions guide would be the best way to fulfill this role, but I would argue that it is not. A solutions guide cannot answer any questions not relating particularly to the problem at hand, cannot explain its reasoning behind a given method of equation-solving, and cannot shed another point of view on a concept. It cannot take the place of a good teacher. Also, to discount the widely-held view that this volume requires an extensive basis in trigonometry and calculus, I would present that I have have never taken any courses in either of these subjects, and I am at the top of my class. The only trigonometry I've had to know so far is sin = opp/hyp and cos = adj/hyp. The rest I can deduce myself, or, if I have real trouble, look at the appendix section in the back covering trigonometric proofs, identities, and rules. Calculus has not come up at all. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's that I love math anyways, maybe it's that our class has one of the best Physics teachers in the state, maybe I would do even better with another textbook. However, since I started this course physics has been taking over my mind, and I wouldn't like to be brainwashed by any book other than Giancoli.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: This is an excellent introductory book , excellent maybe too little. Thanks Giancoli.
Rating: 
Summary: I Hate Physics
Review: This physics book is impossible to understand. From reading the text and going over the examples, one may think that they completely understand the concepts and how to do them on their own. BUT NO! The questions and problems in the book are nearly impossible. I spend hours trying to find out just what the answer is supposed to be and how I could get to the answer. My friend actually looks up the answers in the back first, then plugs in the numbers until she gets the right answer. She doesnt understand any of the concepts. Therefore, this book is not teaching her, but forcing her to try to teach herself. I spend all my time in class and during my lunch and free blocks at school with my teacher, in an attempt for him to teach me every single problem and the process in which to get the answer. As a result, I HATE PHYSICS.
Rating:
Summary: challenging and engaging conceptual clarification
Review: This text book is good for anyone interested in seriously studying physics, complete with chapter reviews and practical mathematical problems, as well as a coverage of all the interesting topics of physics. I especially enjoyed the later portion of the book and the author's treatment of quantum physics, which to many can be an abstruse subject, but Mr. Giancoli does his best to make the concepts clear, and for that i am grateful.
Rating: 
Summary: Physics Fifth Edition, Giancoli
Review: While this book has use for college level physics students, I believe the author does not achieve the purpose he states for writing the book in the preface, "This book is written for students...who are taking a one year introductory course in phyics that uses algebra and triginomoetry but not calculus." I have found that my students, even some who are studying calculus, are having a difficult time understanding the examples in the book and many of the concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Physics Fifth Edition, Giancoli
Review: While this book has use for college level physics students, I believe the author does not achieve the purpose he states for writing the book in the preface, "This book is written for students...who are taking a one year introductory course in phyics that uses algebra and triginomoetry but not calculus." I have found that my students, even some who are studying calculus, are having a difficult time understanding the examples in the book and many of the concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Down with Giancoli
Review: Will someone please tell the King that he has no clothes on? Will someone please stop stocking Physics departments with books that are simply a flag for how clever we all are. "Look at this book chaps..."as we flaunt the open text, "bloody tough to understand, eh?!" Giancoli is accurate and detailed. Giancoli is a fantastic text to dip into (for the most) able student. In my experience of delivering the subject within the English National Curriculum it is hopeless for the 'average' Physics student. Giancoli is black and white in a colourful world. Has anyone that has ordered this book ever seen a Tom Duncan? Have you looked at the Longman series? Streuth! Why do 'we' make it so difficult for people to access our subject?
Rating:
Summary: Down with Giancoli
Review: Will someone please tell the King that he has no clothes on? Will someone please stop stocking Physics departments with books that are simply a flag for how clever we all are. "Look at this book chaps..."as we flaunt the open text, "bloody tough to understand, eh?!" Giancoli is accurate and detailed. Giancoli is a fantastic text to dip into (for the most) able student. In my experience of delivering the subject within the English National Curriculum it is hopeless for the 'average' Physics student. Giancoli is black and white in a colourful world. Has anyone that has ordered this book ever seen a Tom Duncan? Have you looked at the Longman series? Streuth! Why do 'we' make it so difficult for people to access our subject?
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