Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics, Third Edition (book)

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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.

This book is very easy to understand and fun to study from. Very helpful for beginners.

I had to buy this book for my two general physics courses. I must say this book is the most expensive I've ever bought. This leads me to my first bad critique: this book is unnecessarily large and expensive. The book is full of useless pictures (all in vibrant expensive color), it has too many examples and 1/3 of the majority of the pages are blank. I don't recommend this book if your a poor college student. My second bad critique is that some examples aren't fully explained (particularly with the some equations). Third bad critique: some problems require knowledge that you won't find in the book. There was an instance where I ran into a problem (a double Atwood machine problem) that required knowledge of Newton's laws in non-inertial frames which the book does not provide. I managed to solve this problem with outside help but I must say I felt cheated. My last bad critique: this book has no errata yet!
Now for some good points. The authors exposition of the material is fairly straight-forward. The book is full of problems (some which overly challenging but good nevertheless), covers a great number of topics (45 chapters worth), and uses very little calculus (the majority of the problems involve highschool mathematics).

If you're a beginner or not interested in physics stay away from this book. Its mostly geared towards people with high interest and a good reference. Otherwise, the book is very boring to read and all they do is throw formulas at you. Stay away at all costs.