Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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77 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE MIT 8.012 Textbook, September 2, 2002
Wow, here it is at Amazon.com. The textbook used for "Advanced" freshman physics/mechanics at MIT. I first used Kleppner's book when it was a collection of notes in a binder. It was not for sale at the bookstore; you bought it at the Undergraduate Physics office for, [$$$] I recall.But here's the real point: this book, and its wonderful set of homework problems, was written for freshman completely and thoroughly trained in differential and integral calculus. After all, mechanics is all about calculus. I have read many science book reviews here at Amazon, and I am getting the impression that there are many well-prepared students out there, and that calculus is a second language by high school graduation. If this is true, then forget Halliday/Resnick. Forget Serway, forget Giancoli. If you know your calculus well (and I mean well) and you take Freshman Physics using those books, you have wasted a perfectly good semester. It's as simple as this: Does F = ma? Or does F = dP/dt? (Where, of course, F, P and a are vectors.) The problems are, indeed, challenging. They require thinking, reasoning and excellent mathematical skill. They do not simply ask you to draw a force diagram, plug in some masses, resolve some vector components and ask you what the net motion is. From my own personal experience, it is difficult to learn calculus and study this book at the same time. Do your calculus first, and maybe even some differential equations. I think this book is not widely used because it is not easy to ensure that 100% of the class comes in with a good grounding in calculus. That is perhaps why it is sometimes spoken of here as an "honors" level textbook. I will add that Dan Kleppner and his colleague at MIT, David Pritchard (who taught this course for many years) are excellent scientists and teachers. They are not satisfied with the "tried and true" ways of looking at things, and are always searching for new ways to delve into the subject matter. Thus, you will find this to be an intriguing book, with lots of unique approaches and viewpoints. It is very much worth the effort.
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Appropriate for honors physics, July 19, 2004
I am a college professor who has used this text a number of times for an honors course in freshman physics. Quite simply, it is in a class by itself. Standard physics textbooks (Halliday/Resnick, Serway, Young/Freedman, etc.) are all pretty similar to each other, and pretty good if you are learning calculus at the same time. Then there are mechanics books suitable for junior/senior physics majors, or graduate students. There just isn't anything else in between.Students, however, uniformly report that they hate the book--they sometimes express this view quite vehemently in course evaluations. Those that find the course valuable tend to view it like a particularly rigorous boot camp--maybe for Green Berets or Navy Seals or something like that--really tough while you are doing it but a deep sense of accomplishment afterwards. The book is about as non-glossy as you can imagine--no color pictures (or color anything else), no cool pictures of rock climbers or ballet dancers, no warm fuzzies. Just text and equations. But everyone agrees that the homework problems are cool and challenging. Under no circumstances should you use Kleppner and Kolenkow unless you (or your students if you are the instructor) have completely mastered basic calculus and are moderately comfortable with concepts like multidimensional integration, partial derivatives, and differential equations. And be prepared to work hard.
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good for physics professors, not for hobbyists, June 1, 2004
This text is used for MIT's advanced mechanics course, taught in the fall of the freshman year, sometimes still by Dan Kleppner himself. Historically, about 50% of the students drop out of the course and retreat to one of the other physics variants (which use Young and Freedman, or Halliday, Walker, Resnick, I believe). Yes, that's right, valedictorians and overachievers drop left and right out of this course, many citing the text as to abstract and difficult to follow. I understand that many other elite universities have similar classes that use this book with similar results.Some people have very good things to say about this book. They are the ones who already have a good understanding of classical mechanics and are looking for a rigorous, challenging set of examples and problems. I have found this sort of person to be very much in the minority. For the majority of people, who are looking to get an intuitive view of mechanics and how they apply to the modern world, I would suggest Halliday, Walker, and Resnick's Fundamentals of Physics instead of this book. But if you really want deep insight into the nature of mechanics (i.e. you're going to teach it someday), run--don't walk--to the bookstore and buy this book today. On a side note, the E&M portion of the MIT advanced physics series uses Purcell's Electricity and Magnetism, Vol. II. My recommendation would be the same for this book as well: if you love physics and understand it well already, buy the book. Otherwise, avoid it like the plague.
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