Customer Reviews

Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics (3rd Edition)

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3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have used 3 seperate introductory textbooks for physics -

(1) "Physics for Scientists and Engineers" by Giancoli
(2) "Essentials of Universtiy Physics" by Wolfson and Ayars
(3) "Fundementals of Physics" by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker

I used Giancoli for two semesters of AP Physics, Wolfson for my first semester of college physics, and Halliday for my second semester of college physics. I am also currently working through the "modern physics" section of Giancoli in preparation for a course in modern physics.

I can tell you that all the books are about the same, with subtle differences. So ignore the morons who say things like "this is the worst book ever it doesn't explain anything blah blah I'm dumb."

Giancoli(1) seems to take the most mathematical approach, reaching physical conclusions from derived equation, whereas Halliday(3) tends to take a more physical approach, explaining the physics and then deriving the equations. Wolfson(2) seems to be somewhere inbetween these approaches. Which is better is a matter of preference and surprise. As primarly a math student, I was suprised to find I enjoyed Halliday's physical approach more.

There seem to be more problems in Giancoli than in the other two. And Giancoli offers some more difficult problems than the other two. Giancolli and Wolfson also offer a large number of "general problems" at the end of the problems section, which help to tie together the different sections.

I should note here for students planning to use any of these books that the calculationless questions at the end of the chapter are a very useful step toward the more difficult problems. Don't ignore them, they sort of train you to think more critically rather than paging through your book for an equation to plug numbers into.

One advantage of Halliday is the "checkpoint" questions placed at the end of each section. These checkpoints ought to be particularly useful to beginning students who either have trouble monitoring their level of concentration or gauging their level of understanding. This way you won't get to the end of the chapter and say "What the h*** did I just read!"

Wolfson is nice because it comes in three seperate volumes, so you don't have to carry around 1000+ pages of back pain every MWF.

All 3 of these books offer a section in modern physics in recent editions, so that should not be an issue. If you are planning on doing the two semesters of physics, and then a semester on modern physics, it's probably not a bad idea to shell out the extra cash for the modern physics chapters so that you can get a head start over the summer.

All in all I'd say get whatever book your department requires and don't complain because all introductory physics books are about the same. If you have a choice get Giancoli if you like solving difficult problems, get Halliday if you think you will enjoy more physical explainations or have trouble monitoring your concentration or understanding. And get Wolfson if you'd like something inbetween or are concerned about the health of your back. If you are taking AP physics and will need to retake physics in college, maybe try learning from different texts if you can afford it.
My final word is to go with the best bargain, and if money is not an option, you might as well flip a coin or throw darts or something.

I had to use this book during my two semesters of non-calculus college physics, and my first reaction to this 1000+ page monster was mathematical FEAR. However, as I kept reading the book I realized that it explained the majority of concepts clearly even for a person with limited calculus knowledge. The book does an excellent job early on with Newton's three laws, but it gets a little confusing on statics.

The last half of the book was covered in my second semester, and it was also excellent in explaining the topics of thermodynamics, DC and RC circuits, Magnetism and Optics among others. Nevertheless, there were times when the explanation and examples of the book were not enough to answer some of the problems at the end of each chapter. Furthermore, my only complain about the book is that sometimes it uses what my instructor called "Shortcuts" in the sample problems without explaining how the author arrived to a given equation or derivation of a formula. Physics is by no means an easy subject and to do well at it you will need a great instructor and a great book - I was lucky enough to have both.

There are very few books that I keep after I take a class, but I have to say that this book is an invaluable reference that will be in my professional bookshelf for many years.

I am currently taking a calculus-based physics course in my freshman year using Serway's text (Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Sixth Edition). I purchased Giancoli's text because it has the same type of material and a solutions manual to accompany it. I am now in my third term and, having used both books for the first two terms, I can say that Serway's book is probably a better choice for those majoring in physics such as myself. The reason I make this claim is that Serway's derivations are a little more riggerous in most cases and in the exercises Serway FORCES you to develop and derive equations for the perticular problem at hand (precicely what a physicist in the "real world" must be able to do to be successful), whereas Giancoli rarely gives problems that cannot be solved directly by substituting values into given equations. This discrepency can sometimes be troubling though to those not used to having to decide what assumptions to make for themselves.

However, neither book can give a student a complete insight into the complicated subject of physics. Each is a pretty good text for a first course in physics and the level of calculus used in each is very basic (a study of basic differential and integral calculus will do fine).

You are blessed if your professor adopts this book as your textbook. This book presents the physics concepts with rare clarity. It abounds with great number of examples and problems. The overall difficulty level of this book is more challenging than other popular college physics textooks that are available today. A good foundation of senior high school honor Physics and AP physics is certainly helpful. Some selection of topics, such as Coriolis Effect, should capture the imaginations of young minds. This book is currently adpoted as textook at UC-Berkeley (Physics 7 series) and MIT (physics 8.01).

In all fairness to the book, it's not as bad as I made it out to be below. It is a little upsetting to be given tons of equations without any proofs. But the proofs really are beyond the scope of the book. I've looked at other books of the same level since I wrote the original review, and this one has turned out to be better than all the others. The book would've been better if they mentioned a few extra things like how its treatment of electricity and magnetism should be taken as only working in an absolute frame, and is only an approximation to the full treatment.

All in all, this book covers so many topics, that no matter what physics you are doing in the future, you'll always be able to find some information in here that won't be mentioned in your other book.

It covers everything you need to know for a first mechanics course, a course in waves and modern physics, a first course in electricity and magnetism, plus a lot more that is never touched in class. Calculus is not needed for the mechanics course, but it is used in the book. If you know calculus, then you'll benefit. If you don't, you can skip the "calculus equations", and the rest of the mechanics part of the book will still all be comprehensible.

I am a senior physics major and I can assure you, if you are looking for an amazing general reference book, this is the book to get. It is essentially broken into 3 major sections. Newtonian Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, and Modern Physics. It has introductory topics on One and Two Dimensional Kinematics, Newtonian Mechanics, Optics, Electricity and Magnetism (including Maxwell's Equations), Thermodynamics, Special Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Nuclear physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology. I first purchased this book about 4 or 5 years ago for an entry level "University Physics" course. At most Universities this book is used for two semesters. It is a calculus based physics book, so if you have not yet had at least Calculus 1 this book will not be very useful for you if you are going to try to work out the problems. By the time you get to the second half of the book I really recommend at least having Calculus 2. With all of the interesting topics available to read about there are some people that might believe that this book can be read as a popular physics book and just ignore the math. I do not at all recommend that. Although the topics are throughly explained, reading this book and ignoring the math would be an injustice. In every class that I have had in physics since purchasing this book I have consistently gone back to reference it for help. This book is second to none and I believe that there are two books necessary to make it in physics (1) Douglas Giancoli "Physics for Scientists and Engineers" 3rd Edition (2) James Stewart "Calculus" 5th Edition. Just one last thing, make sure that if you are considering purchasing this book note that there are two versions of the 3rd edition. One contains a Modern Physics section and one does not. I highly recommend you get the one with the Modern Physics section. All in all this book is the absolute best and I see myself using all through graduate school.

I realize that if you are looking to buy this book you probably need it for a class and thus do not have the option of not buying the book so I would like to share my experience with it.

I needed this book for my freshmen physics class at SUNY Stony Brook and decided to buy it online. I was greatly dissappointed with how much the book assumes. It assumes a thorough education in calculus and a lot of "common sense" that really isn't so common. As an example, in the first chapter of the book, it assumes that the reader knows that the horizion is the line perpendicular to the tangent of a person on the face of the earth. It does not explain this, rather it just assumes that you would know that, and the book proceeds in this manner through out the later chapters.

The answers that it gives as examples often skip too many important steps and use mathematical ideas that can be foreign to some students, especially freshmen. It is hard to follow the examples because of this and the solutions guide that is meant to complement the book does even worse work in terms of abbreviating important steps and concepts. By skipping too many steps it makes the later chapters more difficult because they assume knowledge which you do not have and, in all likelihood, do not learn in the earlier chapters. The book is filled with too many pictures that really don't illustrate anything important (as an example there is a picture of an ice skater spinning) and not enough free body diagrams and logical, step by step proofs and examples. Overall I found the text to be very frustrating and really lacking in clarity and ease of learning. It was an ordeal more than a guide.

For professors who are considering using this book -- I urge you to pick a different book that has more extensive examples and proofs and doesn't assume as much from the reader.

When i started to use Serway's text for AP physics C, i felt that's a great book. But as i progress, i found Serway's text is so vague and lacked rigor, problem solving, solutions, detailed proof, as appropriete for the level of AP physics C. After using Serway's text for self study for two month, i switched to giancoli's text by friend's recommandation, and i found that it was much better than serway's text in respect that more problem solving, detailed proof are included. I regret that i wrote i review for Serway's text so good.
if you are studying calculus-based physics, i recommand you also buy an outline.

this was an excellent but. I was able to get the textbook and Mastering Physics internet access code for juts under $150.00. this is a savings of more than a hundred dollars as compared to the MSRP.

The main thing I consider with a textbook are the following:
How well can an author communicate ideas to a wide variety of students
How well the subjects are explained
Are there enough examples to see how the subject applies and how well the examples are explained.
Does the text cover enough information to work through at least most of the end of topic questions.

It is assumed that you understand Calculus before you start reading this book, hence the "For Scientists and Engineers" If you expected to learn this book or any other physics book for Scientists and Engineers without having at least one full semester of Calculus, perhaps you didn't understand what the "For Scientists and Engineers" meant. Usually all of these books require at least one full semester of Calc knowledge to work through the first few chapters, but really a full understanding to work through the entire book.

With this in mind, I find this book very readable, much more so than Serway and Jewett, I like the examples better and there are more of them, and the questions at the end of the chapters have varying levels of difficulty, which is normal for any serious textbook. Giancoli writes in plain English, not in Science speak (to the degree he can of course). I also find that each topic has enough explanation for me to understand. Lastly, I can work through many of the questions without having to go to other sources. So for me, this book meets all my criteria for a high quality textbook.