University Physics (with InfoTrac)

Rating:
Summary: Intro physics instructors, go no further!
Review: "University Physics" is a wonderful introductory physics text --- I should know, I'm a student who used it last semester! Reese pares no material -- he isn't afraid to use vector calculus (after the introductory chapters on vectors, of course) and will show formulas that have partial derivaties -- he even has a conceptual section of a chapter on Fourier series. This book is excellent -- there are very many problems so the student gets lots of practice, and some of the problems are quite tough, but end up being beautifully crafted -- once you discover the answer! All of the problems, in fact, rely on material explicitly covered in each chapter, so there are no surprises or new concepts sprung on the student while he is doing the problems, just the sense that he is doing things by the most general method possible, and hence learning them in the most efficient manner possible. Reese does not rely on special tricks of symmetry or vector identities to transform equations that he believes may be 'scary looking' to the student into soft, over-simplified special cases. Reese treats the student as if he is intensely interested in physics and is planning on making a career in it.

However, this book is not beyond students on even a more rudimentary level, like those who are engineering, chemistry, or biology majors. In fact, I found this book much easier to use and much more accessible than another book by Giancoli meant for non-physics majors -- mainly because Reese presents the material in its most general form, allowing students to hence derive all they need to know about special cases from the general form. Instructors, this is what makes physics easier! It is harder -- even for non-physics majors -- to learn just about the special cases, as simpler books often try to press.

This book is ideal for freshmen in college, but can also be used for high school students who have some knowledge of very rudimentary calculus.

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly disigned, thourough and well structured
Review: I am a Physics Enginnering student at Washington and Lee, and I was blessed to not only be able to use this text, but be taught by the author of the book! Who was my freshman physics prof. His book is the most well structered as well as complete text book I have come in contact with!

Rating:
Summary: What this book is about
Review: This is a great text for Physics at the freshmen level because it stays on the freshmen level. It has very challenging problems that are progressively difficult. The only problem, is that it does not reach deep enough into Physics for a University text.