Customer Reviews

Sears and Zemansky's University Physics (10th Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Everyone says War and Peace is a great classic, but not everyone wants to read it, and few actually did.

For physics majors and honors students, this is a wonderfully rich and thorough text, teach them the "right stuff" from the start. My students have had only good things to say about it. It doesn't shy away from complicated math when it is necessary. A good example of that is in the chapter on gravitation, the potential due to a spherical shell of mass is fully worked out by integration: ~1/r outside the shell and constant inside. This is an important result that gets used repeatedly, e.g., later in electrostatics. Every book tells the readers about the inverse-square force law between two point objects, but few explain how to go from points to spheres, or why spheres may be regarded as points sometimes. Some texts dodge the issue completely, others state the result and not explain it. As a result, it is common to see students get the wrong idea that whatever formulas that are good for point objects are good for spherical objects, because they plugged the numbers into the formulas and got the right answers! That's exactly not what we like to see in physics. With this book, even if the students are not ready to do the math, they at least know the difference and the explanation is there for them to read when they are ready.

The exercises and problems in this text are real gems. There are numerous real-life applications of basic physics. Some are like mini research reports. These are enriching and stimuating for the physics loving students. They get to see the difference between doing science versus doing contrived mathematical excercises. I have a colleague X who once remarked to me that another colleague Y assigned some really interesting problems to his students that he had never seen. We later discovered the secret: Y got most of his problems from this text!

In sum, this is a more advanced introductory text that has the right stuff. If you're enthusiastic about physics, it's highly recommended.

This book is several tiers above in quality what I was forced to deal with as a textbook when I took Freshman Engineering Physics years ago. So when my long-frazzled freshman physics volume finally gave up the ghost, I replaced it with this 10th edition of University Physics. This is how all scientific textbooks should be written. In this book, all concepts are clearly described, there are plenty of instructive figures, and most of all, lots of detailed examples and solved problems. I am specifically recommending the 10th edition, rather than the eleventh edition which is called "University Physics with Modern Physics" by Young et al. That is because with the exception of the modern physics section, the two books are virtually identical. I don't know why authors do this to students. Just as a volume gets affordable they make a minor change and foist a triple-digit price tag upon the poor students, which is largely unaffordable to many undergraduates. In fact this text actually deletes some material from the classical physics section in the 11th edition! So, unless you MUST have this book because you are taking a class and there is no other way around it, or you are interested in the greatly expanded (and very good) modern physics of the 11th edition, save yourself some major bucks and buy this edition used. To prove to you that this out-of-print volume has virtually the same classical physics content as the 11th edition, I present to you the 10th edition's table of contents:
MECHANICS.
1. Units, Physical Quantities, and Vectors.
2. Motion Along a Straight Line.
3. Motion in Two or Three Dimensions.
4. Newton's Laws of Motion.
5. Applications of Newton's Laws.
6. Work and Kinetic Energy.
7. Potential Energy and Energy Conservation.
8. Momentum, Impulse, and Collisions.
9. Rotation of Rigid Bodies.
10. Dynamics of Rotational Motion.
11. Equilibrium and Elasticity.
12. Gravitation.
13. Periodic Motion.
14. Fluid Mechanics.
THERMODYNAMICS.
15. Temperature and Heat.
16. Thermal Properties of Matter.
17. The First Law of Thermodynamics.
18. The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
WAVES/ACOUSTICS.
19. Mechanical Waves.
20. Wave Interference and Normal Modes.
21. Sound and Hearing.
ELECTROMAGNETISM.
22. Electric Charge and Electric Field.
23. Gauss's Law.
24. Electric Potential.
25. Capacitance and Dielectrics.
26. Current, Resistance, and Electromotive Force.
27. Direct-Current Circuits.
28. Magnetic Field and Magnetic Forces.
29. Sources of Magnetic Field.
30. Electromagnetic Induction.
31. Inductance.
32. Alternating Current.
33. Electromagnetic Waves.
OPTICS.
34. The Nature and Propagation of Light.
35. Geometric Optics.
36. Optical Instruments.
37. Interference.
38. Diffraction.
MODERN PHYSICS.
39. Relativity.
Appendices.
Answers to Odd-Numbered Problems.
Credits.
Index.
To be fair these are the extra chapters that you get if you buy the 11th edition:
38. Quantum Physics I: Photons, Electrons, and Atoms.
39. Quantum Physics II: The Wave Nature of Particles.
40. Quantum Physics III: Quantum Mechanics.
41. Atomic Structure.
42. Molecules and Condensed Matter.
43. Nuclear Physics.
44. Particle Physics and Cosmology.
Plus, there is some web-enabled stuff you get with the 11th edition, but I don't think it is worth the huge price tag!

Little background. I'm a trucker in the summer, and a short order cook in the winter. I loved this book. I first bought a used copy of the fourth edition, and after a few years I have purchased the 10th edition with the modern physics. That stuff I still have trouble with.
I got these cause I had a ton of questions about how stuff works. And they break it down. I had done well in Physics before, but this was a whole new ball game. The mathematics is not explained especially well, but the physics behind it is. And once you understand that, the math comes.
For those of you who knock this book, well, they must be doing something right, cause 1) their on the 10th edition. and (2) They were able to reach a shmoe like me.

I find this book to be very good at explaining the concepts of physics. In addition to clearly presenting principles and derivations of those principles, it also clearly addresses issues that are difficult for students to understand. There are numerous examples of how to apply the principles to problems. Some examples are traditional problems that have been around as long as anyone can recall, others are new. This is not to be considered an easy book, nor is the study of physics easy. You must really work to understand the material. To this end there are problems whose solution is not included in the text; the reason is to avoid the plug-and-chug attitude that many people have about physics - that memorizing formulas and techniques are all that are necessary to understand physics. As someone who has been teaching physics for more than 20 years I can tell you that this book is good for both the student and the instructor.

I think this is a very good introductory physics book. Most of the time, students who give bad reviews to this kind of book just do not know how to study themselves. If you keep asking for solutions manual, all you are saying is that you just want to regurgitate what somebody else has done before...sorry, but science or engineering doesn't work that way. You have to actually use your brain to think VERY CAREFULLY about what you are doing --- learning how to do THAT is probably the only thing you would get out of studying science. You'll forget formulae and examples anyways. When I used the book as a TA, I mostly heard that "I get more out of reading the text than attending lectures." I guess it says something about the faculty quality of my school, but then, I think the topics are very carefully presented, not much of leap of reasoning is necessary, etc. I sometimes felt the wording of the end-of-chapter problems can be a bit confusing, though.

Also, compared to some other intro calculus based physics book (such as Holliday & Resnick), the book feels a bit less rigorous, which may actually be good --- I don't know why that is, but it might be related to the fact that the the school where the auther appears to teach has a reputation for very low quality undergraduates. But if that helped to make this textbook even better, that's a good thing. For budding engineers and others who need calc based intro physics, I think the book is excellent. For physicists, I might go with a more rigorous book.

The text is a bit confusing, but reading the figures and summaries helps a lot. Some of the problems aren't covered in the book, so you're going to have to get some help for the harder problems

I'm using this textbook to review the subject for the CSET in California. It's an excellent book for self-study, covering all essential topics clearly, with a good number of problems and exercises.

This book is missing the last few hundred pages of modern physics. If you intend to use that section buy a different edition.

The format in this book is confusing and the pictures take up so much space you can't tell what is text and what is describing the picture. The problems in the back of each chapter are increasingly difficult to the point of insanity. Pray to whatever you hold to be sacred that your teacher does not assign any problems past number 45. There are answers provided in the back of the book, but on many occaisions, they are wrong. I am also tired of physics books talking about monkeys getting shot and falling out of trees. If any of you out there are thinking about writing a physics text, LEAVE THIS EXAMPLE OUT, PLEASE.

This is definetely one of the worst physics books I have seen. They neither really incorporate the math as if they are afraid people will be frightened and then when they do, it is REALLY hard to follow. Explanations are really, really bad, each topic is about 30 pages long, but the essence of a concept is never elucidated. You learn how to solve THEIR problems, but you never quite understand what is really going on. Unfortunately, I HAD to buy this book for a class.