Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for self-study
Review: I found this book to be an excellent resource for preparing for the AP Physics examination. I also plan on using it for first year university physics.The book does a great job of explaining concepts and spares the reader no details. In retrospect the only thing I missed was the accompanying solutions manual. All in all, I give this book 5 stars out of 5.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad tries to....
Review: Incorporate real life problems, with each chapter having a question that many have seen in real life. I have used this book parts 1, 2, and 3 in the softcover and found it to be a fairly easy read for a technical book. The book has step by step examples, informative appendices and colorful graphics. A job well done by the authors.
Rating: 
Summary: Worst Textbook Known to Man
Review: This books reads like a thesaurus. It's nothing more than an extended appendix of basic physics equations and their derivations, a sample problem (if you're lucky) and a brief explanation of the variables. For covering such a broad topic in one volume, it fails at every level. Some of the worst chapters include the electricity and magnetism units. Complicated concepts like Biot-Savart, Guassian surfaces, and electric fields are covered in a few paragraphs of dry uniform drivel that provides no basis or reason for derivation, theory, or appliance. Either the authors were trying to squeeze 2000 years of science unsuccessfully into a few hundred pages, or they started off by attempting to confuse and humiliate 95% of those that read this book, they won in any case. In the simplest analogy, using the CRC Handbook as the primary text would be more satisfying for students than this worthless, poorly contrived volume. It stands, by far, as the worst educational work for any level of learning. High school educators should look toward Saxon Publishing's Physics, probably the best of its breed. Colleges, on the other hand, seem to relish this book because it provides an excellent tool for weeding out 1/3 of the class. For those rare higher learning institutions that care about all of their students, it's best to look into a series that fully explains each topic, provides helpful, fully descriptive examples, and analyzes all mathematical calculations with not just proofs, but references to past chapters/concepts. In other words, everythingk this book doesn't provide. It's the worst physics book ever published. I wonder how and why it's been in print for over thirty years, and hasn't been criticized for its utter uselessness. Avoid at all costs and at all levels. Physics education should not be like this.
Rating:
Summary: It Doesn't Suck
Review: As A Physics Undergrad, I've Used The 5th Edition of the bookand Also the 4th. Pretty much the same material. I've gone through an entire semester of not going to lecture and just reading the book for studying and I got a B+ in my Physics 1 class. So it's not bad at all. As always you should work all the problems just like any math or physics book and the highlighted formulas are great when you don't want to bother looking at proofs or derivations. It has good chapter summaries which give you all the relavent formulas you need and the solutions manuals are decent but not very clear because it skips a lot of steps. Of course most of you are required to buy this book anyways.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but nothing new
Review: This book offers go examples and easy to follow directions.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent book for beginners
Review: I HAVE BEEN RAEDING THIS BOOKS FOR LST YEAR AND I FOUND THIS BOOL REALLY GOOD AND EFFECTIVE.I WAS ABLE TO UNDERSATND THE BASIC CONCEPT OF PHYSICS. THE AUTHOR HAS EXPLAINED THE THINGS VERY NICELY .GIVING EXAMPLES WITH EVERY ARTICLE MADE THE THINGS VERY SIMPLE AND UNDERSTANDING.FIRST I FOUND PHYSICS VERY TOUGH BUT WITH THE ADOPTION OF THIS BOOK .I FIND IT VERY COOL.IT IS REALLY GOOD BOOK.
Rating:
Summary: great book with helpful illustrations
Review: I didn't have a particularly good teacher to go along with this book, and the explanations and illustrations in it helped me very much. The book covers calculus-based physics that the basic principles of Physics are based on, but also uses a lot of algebra. This book was used in a "Physics for Engineers" course where I took it, but anyone who understands basic calculus (integration and differentiation) won't have a hard time with this textbook at all.
Rating:
Summary: Not for Kids
Review: This is THE introductory physics text for those who are serious about learning how the universe works, or should I say, how the scientific community presently believes the universe works. It must be tackled either concurrent with or following a rigorous course in calculus. Too bad physics is so complicated - but don't blame the authors for that state of affairs. Learning the material in this book equips one to understand the subject well enough to derive the answers to most problems in physics from basic principles, which I find useful because I hate to memorize a bunch of formulas. Those whose eyes roll back in their heads at the thought of balancing the checkbook, be warned - this book is not of the "Physics for Dummies" or "Physics Appreesh" category.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Text
Review: This text is, in fact, a bible for introductory physics. It requires strong calculus skills, but these necessary for a strong understanding of physics to begin with. If you are an idiot, that is, if you don't understand advanced calculus, then perhaps this book is not for you. As for everyone else- you will regret learning with anything else. This book offers great examples, well written test, and interresting (and on ocassion challenging) problems.
Rating: 
Summary: Book is tough to understand.
Review: This book -- proclaimed by many to be THE book in physics -- is not the best introduction to physics for students. For one thing, the mathematics in the books is mind-boggling difficult. The authors use vector calculus and advance calculus and offer no primer for students who have weak calculus skills. Another big problem with the book is the shoddy explanations. The writing isn't very clear. Often, I'd finish reading a chapter and would absolutely have NO clue as to what I had just read. In sum, I'd stay far away from this book. The book has challenging problems at the end but doesn't develop the conceptual base to tackle those problems.
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