College Physics, Seventh Edition

Rating:
Summary: Not too good
Review: Found this book to be rather lacking in clear elucidation of fundamental physical topics, but the pictures were good

Rating:
Summary: Great book for preparing for IIT JEE
Review: I used this book to prepare for IIT-JEE in India. It is an excellent book! Two-enthusiastic thumbs up!

Rating:
Summary: an old classic
Review: there are countless physics books out there and trust me, i've probably gone through at least half a dozen intro physics ones. i took ap physics in high school and then the full year of physics at college (the introductory year-long course). i also ta-ed and tutored physics at other colleges besides my own during the summer and of course, every school has a different textbook. and as i've gone through so many, i find myself coming back to this one.

this is appropriate for those who are taking either the calc-based or noncalc-based physics course. it does have calc-related derivations in it but you can simply ignore those and still understand what they're trying to say. what i like about it mostly is that it gives it to you in a very no-nonsense kind of way (i.e. here is the concept, here are the equations, here are some examples. there is no frivilous colorful images, no detailed digressions - the entire book is pretty monochromatic and straight-forward. this is good, at least to me, because i've always hated how some textbooks fill up a page of useless information). another great feature is that it has some excellent pictural diagrams that accompany what it's trying to teach.

i won't lie, it's not an "easy" textbook but it's not "hard as hell" either. it plans on teaching you real college-level stuff and i think that the difficulty level is very appropriate for most college-level courses. i always use this book as a companion to whatever other textbook the college is forcing me to use and time and time again, i find myself flipping through this one whenever i get confused over a concept. it's well-written and worth it, at least in my opinion.