Fundamentals of Physics

I used the previous edition but I looked at this edition and the only thing that has changed from editions is the cover, the formatting, and the reordering of the problems. It is a great book in retrospect. There were a few moments where I really disliked this book. The first half of the book was a breeze. My review of the second half (E & M) is a little mixed. I felt some of the concepts were not explained clearly enough and I spent way too much time and effor trying to figure out what was going on. Overall though the book explains things pretty thoroughly. The problems go from easy to hard. Do all the odd problems sequentially and you should be good. You don't need calculus really, but it is pretty hard to understand some of the E & M stuff without it. Optics section was rough and I spent way too much time on it. Special relativity and quantum mechanics is just a survey. The quantum and relativity part of the book doesn't really explain anything precisely and instead tries to convince the reader with qualitative arguments. The equations used are special cases with nice closed form solutions. I think the last few chapters of the book is just filler.

I'm sure you can read a ton of reviews on here that will tell you the same thing. The examples are great, the text is straightforward and clear, and the exercises are adequately elaborated, so no problem really leaves you thinking "well, this just can't be right...". And in case you get stuck, you've got easily the best software companion available for any textbook ever. The CD-Physics companion can guide you through solutions for many of the exercises, either by presenting a nicely worked out solution as you would write it on a paper, by giving you hints, or by helping you solve the problem yourself with the interactive LearningWare feature. It becomes obvious that this book spends a lot of time making sure the reader can achieve an adequate understanding of the material, rather than forcing the student to memorize vague formulas which seem to have no unity. The chapters are presented in a (somewhat) reasonable order, building on concepts learned in the previous chapter in most cases. You get the full introductory college physics stuff in this book, from Newtonian mechanics to thermodynamics to electricity and electromagnetic waves. This is perfect for the student who shies from asking others for help, as either the book or the CD Physics companion will have the answers they seek. I was never particularly fond of physics and have always thought of it as the bare essentials for a computer engineer, but this book gave me a new appreciation for the physical aspects of my engineering field, especially with the very complete (from a general overview) chapters on electricity, capacitance, and inductance.

The 'Halliday/Resnick' physics textbook has been used at the university introductory level for decades. This latest edition is colorful, interesting, filled with solved problems, and suitable for the interested general reader. Only a limited knowledge of calculus is assumed. The 'Extended Edition' contains chapters on quantum physics and cosmology not present in the 'Regular Edition'. The chapter on gravitation includes a brief, nonmathematical description of Einstein's general theory of relativity, including its inspiration by the principle of equivalence. Towards the end of the textbook, an entire, easy-to-read chapter on special relativity is included. This is followed by similar introductory chapters on matter waves, nuclear physics and particle physics. This reference provides the motivated general reader with a suitable background to be able then to read most books on modern physics.

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