Customer Reviews

University Physics with Modern Physics with MasteringPhysics™ (12th Edition)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book is extremely well done, and this being the 12th edition this should be no surprise. The explanations of the concepts are good enough, but the real strengths of the book lie in the well-done figures, in the generous number of thoroughly explained numerical examples, and in the well thought-out problem sets at the end of each chapter. If you use this book along with the Schaum's Outline of College Physics you should have as easy a time as is possible with the subject matter.

Now for what is not so good, which lies entirely in the cynical marketing strategy. I have compared the 12th edition to the 11th, and I cannot find one additional subject or chapter or even one that has been deleted. The two books seem to have identical subject matter, and that is saying quite a bit for two 1700 plus page textbooks that are supposed to be different editions. So what is different? From the publisher's own information, the difference seems to be in revised exercises, revised drawings, added sketches to worked examples, added goals at the beginning of each chapter, and other such minutia. Hardly the stuff that new editions should be made of considering the price tag. The final ploy, just to insure that the poor students are "locked into" buying a new book is the concept of the student access kit that comes with each book and acts as a personal tutor to the student. But here's the catch - once one student has opened it and used it, it is useless to any other student. So much for reselling your textbook at the end of the semester. Normally I would take off at least two stars for such blatant highway robbery, but the book is so artfully done I just can't find it in myself to do so. The following is the 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. Applying 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

WAVES/ACOUSTICS
15. Mechanical Waves
16. Sound and Hearing

THERMODYNAMICS
17. Temperature and Heat
18. Thermal Properties of Matter
19. The First Law of Thermodynamics
20. The Second Law of Thermodynamics

ELECTROMAGNETISM
21. Electric Charge and Electric Field
22. Gauss's Law
23. Electric Potential
24. Capacitance and Dielectrics
25. Current, Resistance, and Electromotive Force
26. Direct-Current Circuits
27. Magnetic Field and Magnetic Forces
28.. Sources of Magnetic Field
29. Electromagnetic Induction
30. Inductance
31. Alternating Current
32. Electromagnetic Waves

OPTICS
33. The Nature and Propagation of Light
34. Geometric Optics and Optical Instruments
35. Interference
36. Diffraction

MODERN PHYSICS
37. Relativity
38. Photons, Electrons, and Atoms
39. The Wave Nature of Particles
40. Quantum Mechanics
41. Atomic Structure
42. Molecules and Condensed Matter
43. Nuclear Physics
44. Particle Physics and Cosmology

The University Physics is pretty much the standard for college physics, but I think that they have really dropped the ball with this edition.
The material is very clear with lots of good illustrations, making the book very easy to self-study.
However, the quality of the book is terrible! Here are the things that my physics class learned to hate about it after the second semester:

-VERY heavy! The book weighs almost 10 lbs! Even on my small campus, I got tired of lugging that book around.

-BAD Binding. If you want to keep the book in good condition, don't plan on carrying it in a backpack. After halfway into the second semester, the books started falling apart--the binding wasn't strong enough to support the weight of the book.

-SMEARING Ink. I regularly check the answers in the back of the book, but after about a month the ink began to smear because I would flip back at the same spot multiple times.

-WRONG Answers: Many people have noticed that the answers in the back to the odd-numbered problems are wrong. Our professor started getting in the habit of assigning our homework on the board, then writing down the correct answers below. I would think that this, being the 12TH EDITION, would have fixed all those kinks!

So my advice: Don't buy the book unless you have to--wait until the next edition comes out. I wouldn't try to buy it used either, because I think the quality of the book would only allow it to last long enough for one student.

Young and Freedman's is much better than Halliday's. While Halliday's are problem oriented approach which teaches concepts through problems solving. Serway's is similar to Young and Freedman and explains concepts well, but it doesn't have as many difficult problems as YF. I read both the 11th and 12th Edition. They have basically the same content. Even the 9th Edition doesn't differ much from this new freshly out of oven book. Problem arrangement is pretty much the same for all the edition with some additional problems and slightly modified arrangement. I bought the older 9th edition for my class this past semester. It went well. Our problem assignments are not from the textbook. Moreover, the library has a reserved copy. I used that for reference to the textbook problems.

This book deserves an ovation for its quality, for its assumption that the reader is intelligent and for its beautiful, clear explanations supplemented by colorful and helpful diagrams and examples. I can find no flaws with this book, either with its organization or its mathematical conventions, other than neglecting electric flux density and pure magnetic field altogether, but they are trivial. It places a heavy (but due) emphasis on vector intuition and notation, which is a great foundation for all physics. If you found the book too hard, then that's good because you learn more from a slightly challenging textbook than one that involves no vectors, no calculus based explanation and no challenging-to-impossible chapter problems. I have used this for many other classes, including particle physics, relativity, and semiconductors because its explanations and intuitive references are way better than any other book. It will probably be on my shelf forever, and is definitely worth way more than the value.

There are a couple of things I appreciate about this book; namely, the authors have a semi-comical, lighthearted tone about the subject matter. This makes the writing bearable.

Attempting to learn from the book itself, however, is like drinking from a firehose. First off, you're overwhelmed with visuals. Maybe I just have a bad case of ADHD, but the fact that any given page will contain at least 4 pictures and 3 disparate segments of content completely overwhelms me. Showing a picture of a race car does not at all help me learn about momentum, okay? Reading the book is, at best, like learning from a roadside billboard and, at worst, like starring into a flashlight. It's obvious that the authors wanted to create a visually engaging experience, but my god, it's hard to focus when your senses are being bombarded with so much peripheral information. Printing the damn thing in black and white would be a step in the right direction, and it'd probably save a few bucks too.

Another annoying aspect about this book is the ISEE method that permeates the example problems; the authors' pet method for going about solving presented problems tends to obfuscate the examples and take away from any cohesion that the answers create. Besides, anyone who's taking university level physics should not need a problem solving framework to get them through mechanics, it just serves as an unnecessary barrier to the information for those of us who don't think in the ISEE format.

Basically, my unified complaint is that in an attempt to present a helluva lot of material in a stimulating way, the authors trip over themselves. I'm a fairly diligent student, but often while reading this textbook I'll ask myself, "okay, what did I just read?" This usually happens at least twice until I (rather, if I) get what the authors were trying to convey.

I wish the textbook was more simple, more straightforward, and less reliant on using confusing examples and "numbers" to detail the subject matter. When it comes time for homework, I have a hard time amalgamating the concepts that were scattered over the examples; more often than not, there is no passage detailing the governing idea at work, I end up having to wade through some obtuse example instead of having a general concept to apply.

University Physics was the required textbook for Physics I & II. The book does a good job of explaining the physics and the mathematics behind it, although it can be verbose at times. The book is much too heavy as the binding is wearing.

I found the writing and coverage of the material a little more clear and easy to read and understand than another similar physics textbook that I'm using. That's a big plus.

Two big downsides:

There is an absurd number of mistakes in the answers in the back of the book. I have found mistakes in absolutely every single text book that I seriously work through, so some mistakes are acceptable, but this book definitely has the highest ratio of mistakes. I'd estimate that 15%-25% of the answers given are just wrong, which is absurdly high.

Secondly, the contents of the book that I got are completely grayscale; no color at all. (I got the soft cover, the hardcover print is hopefully different). For a full priced textbook, I am disappointed. Some of the illustration captions even mention color, "the blue line indicates X, the red line indicates Y", and everything is grayscale. This indicates the book was designed to be color.

This is just a rant not a review. Why are there 13 edition of a $200 physics book! The physics taught in this book hasn't changed in the past 10, 20 , or even 100 years. We're already paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to college, and yet we still have to pay so much textbooks that end up collecting dust on our shelves. Messed up system.

Why hasn't there been a solutions manual created yet for the 13th Edition? The book is good, there are odd answers in back but I'd like to check my work with step by step process.

This book is a pretty easy read. It also has fantastic countless diagrams and drawings of what the book is talking about. The book is great with in-depth example of solving problems, and the way to go about solving the problems.

In the end, you rarely pick your textbooks, but this one, with a half decent professor is great at breaking down problems and concepts to easy manageable sections. Where my book lacked (only a few sections) my professor (whom I really liked but many other students thought was only ok) did a great job clarifying and making sure what he wanted stood out. I cannot emphasize how RARE this was. The book is great. I skimmed it for parts my professor did not go over well and really used it for the fantastic examples and example problems it went over. It really breaks the problems down into manageable concepts.

The book is quite large and heavy, so if you like to carry your books around I would recommend the 3 volume set, even though it will probably cost you a bit more, they are much smaller and easier to carry around, although they are paperback.