Rating: 
Summary: A confusing textbook
Review: This textbook was very hard to understand. The authors discuss the material in such a way that unless you spend all your time reading their book, you won't ever get it. I spent way too much time over a full academic year trying to figure out what the book meant. And when I worked the problems, I often times didn't understand the material well enough to even begin to know how to approach them. The problems in this book are usually set up so that you have to derive your own equations *based on* the equations the authors discuss. The authors take a very loopy, confusing approach to thermodynamics (I had to try to forget a lot of the stuff I learned from this book when I took Physical Chemistry courses). Further, the chapters on thermo are not nearly complete enough, and the analogies used are usually bad. This book covers all the basic topics, like any other standard physics text, but the level of discussion is just slightly too advanced for the John Doe taking a General Calculus-based Physics class, whose only background is high school physics.
Look into some other textbooks...I hear Serway's book is
good.
Rating: 
Summary: NEGATIVE 5 STARS
Review: This book, and it's complimenting e-grade system has made Physics the worst experience of my college life thus far. The problems are confusing, the grammar is very poor, and the book lacks organization. The worst thing is the e-grade system. Picky and ungodly slow, it has frustrated hundreds of students, as well as their professors. I found myself at the tip of anger when it took me over 5 hours to complete an assignment, simply because the pages took around 5-10 minutes to load.Please DO NOT SUPPORT THESE PEOPLE. They are evil and need to be banished from writing bad textbooks and frustrating students further.
Rating: 
Summary: Good intro text to physics
Review: For those taking advanced highschool or introductory physics in college, this is a great text to get started with. Advanced enough to be somewhat challenging to a new student, it has very good problems at the end of each chapter to test how much you've learned and usually a few of them are somewhat tricky. If you're an advanced physics student, you will no doubt find this to be a tad on the basic side, and if you want to see the derivations of every equation you use, again, this isn't your book. I've kept this text from my university work, and I still reference it occasionally. It was definitely of help for looking up stray concepts while I prepared for the MCAT exam. A useful reference for science students not specializing in physics.
Rating: 
Summary: Not The Best, Not the Worst
Review: I used this as a text book for three semesters of University education. Some chapters are fine and quite readable, and others are random and completely lack organization. Some chapters take one point and beat it into the ground with a large baseball bat made out of lead, others mention something once and assume you understand it completely. The examples are fair but compared to some of the chapter end questions you'd scarcely believe that they came from the same book, the difficulty varies greatly. As for the explanations even the best in this book I did not find as well stated or helpful to understanding as those found in Tipler's "Physics for Scientists and Engineers." Buy this book if you are taking a class and they require you to use it, buy it not if you are trying to learn physics on your own, as I doubt it will help you very much unless you already know it.
Rating:
Summary: is this a money-making gimmick or what?
Review: Our physics department decided to switch to this book last year, and I have been trying to figure out which edition to buy.. "extended enhanced problem edition", "extended", "enhanced"? How about throwing in a student's companion text that contains "chapter extensions?"? What about getting the right Solutions manual? only 30% of the solutions are in it? And now I just found out they have published (another?) new 7th edition which no doubt will have a brand new array of essential supplements and extensions. Why all these editions and supplements?
Rating:
Summary: Average text, but costs too much
Review: This is an average text, which means there are things about this book that are both good and bad. Let me begin with the good. "Fundamentals" is a fairly rigorous text. There are many topics contained in this book and each topic is covered in adequate depth and there are a large number and variety of problems to solve for each topic. Also, like any good calc-based physics text should, it introduces vectors early and sticks with the use of vectors and vector components throughout the text. There are, however, some bad aspects to this book. The biggest problem with this text (and most others) is it's terse treatment of inertial reference frames. A more indepth examination of reference frames would probably reduce student frustration later on when solving problems. My other big gripe with this book is its outrageous cost. $140 is just too much for a text. My suggestion is this, if you're enrolled in a physics course that requires this text, just check out an intro physics book from your library if you can. If you're autodidactic, look into Dover Thrift books. You can get a physics text there with all the same material for about 1/7th the cost of "Fundamentals".
Rating: 
Summary: The classic......(I used it as a T.A. and as a student)
Review: I am a graduate student in physics and I have been a teaching assistant for 3 years now at Iowa State Univesity and SUNY Stony Brook. I have taught introductory physics numerous times and I have teaching experience with this book: IT IS GREAT. It is everything that the students ever dreamed of. Every chapter has really easy to follow explanation of the fundamental theory and numerous step-by-step solved problems and examples. It also has nice boxes with general strategies for solving problems. At the end of every chapter there is an extensive collection of exercises that fit well with the material of the book. An advice for the students: Dont start doing your homework before you understand the material. I have seen it numerous times, students that have not understood what is really going on, trying to solve the problems. Big mistake. Open the Halliday-Ressnick book, study the material first and then solve the problems. There is a general fear among the students to go through the theory of the book (any book) first and spend some quality time trying to absorb it. They just think that physics is too difficult of a subject and that they wont understand a thing. For that reason they just use their collection of formulae and blindly try to apply it in order to solve the problems. I believe that Halliday-Resnick breaks this barrier, their treatment of the subject shows how much they care for the student and they do their best to explain things in the easiest possible way.Something that really breaks the ice is a photograph at the beginning of each chapter that shows an everyday phenomenon that will be treated in the course of that particular chapter, like the picture showin a young girl up in the mountain, with her hair floating up in the air! (a dangerous situation as explained in the book), or the explosion of the Hinderburg and also the picture of a man inside a car that is being hit by a lightning without harming the man inside! As an undergraduate in physics I used this book too for my introductory physics courses so I also have read it from the student point of view. I believe that it does a superb job clarifyng the fundamental principles of physics without difficult or "intellectual-kind" of explanations. It goes step by step building up until you understand it. I also used this book extensively to prepare for the Physics subject GRE test and it helped a lot. I still keep it in my office and frequently look for things that I have forgotten. I totaly recommend it. As for the mathematical prerequisites of the book that a previous reviewer has commented on I would say that you need to how to solve simple integrals (nothing more dramatic than a polyonym or a trigonometric function or 1/r and 1/r^2) and also it would be nice to know the meaning of a derivative as the rate of change of a function with respect to some variable. Nothing more. Enjoy! P.S.1 I am familiar with the 4th and 5th edition. P.S.2 There exists a solution manual for the book. Very helpful.
Rating:
Summary: is this a money-making gimmick or what?
Review: Our physics department decided to switch to this book last year, and I have been trying to figure out which edition to buy.. "extended enhanced problem edition", "extended", "enhanced"? How about throwing in a student's companion text that contains "chapter extensions?"? What about getting the right Solutions manual? only 30% of the solutions are in it? And now I just found out they have published (another?) new 7th edition which no doubt will have a brand new array of essential supplements and extensions. Why all these editions and supplements?
Rating:
Summary: Average text, but costs too much
Review: This is an average text, which means there are things about this book that are both good and bad. Let me begin with the good. "Fundamentals" is a fairly rigorous text. There are many topics contained in this book and each topic is covered in adequate depth and there are a large number and variety of problems to solve for each topic. Also, like any good calc-based physics text should, it introduces vectors early and sticks with the use of vectors and vector components throughout the text. There are, however, some bad aspects to this book. The biggest problem with this text (and most others) is it's terse treatment of inertial reference frames. A more indepth examination of reference frames would probably reduce student frustration later on when solving problems. My other big gripe with this book is its outrageous cost. $140 is just too much for a text. My suggestion is this, if you're enrolled in a physics course that requires this text, just check out an intro physics book from your library if you can. If you're autodidactic, look into Dover Thrift books. You can get a physics text there with all the same material for about 1/7th the cost of "Fundamentals".
Rating:
Summary: Good for Physics
Review: I used this book in high school for AP Advanced Physics for mechanics and electromagnetics, but unfortunately did not take the AP test. So now that I am in college and am taking physics - only the second semester electromagnetics and optics, guess what, it is the exact same book. I can see how people find the book not very easy to read. I didn't understand much of it in high school. Now that I am taking it for a second time in college though, I can read the book and it makes perfect sense. I skip lecture about 50% of the time, and have a 97% in the class. Problems at the end of each chapter aren't that difficult.
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