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Rating:  Summary: don't bother Review: After taking 3 semesters in college physics, I found this book to be overly simple and extremely convoluted with worthless wordiness and comparisons. The book is confusing in its style and difficult to follow when trying to learn a particular section. The books approach to physics seems to be more of a "feel good" and neither quantitative nor qualitative and lacks substance. This book simply does not take a serious nor professional approach to physics. The "got it" sections appear, for the most part, useless. They do not make any points, review any parts of the chapter nor do they provide any further enlightenment of the subject. The questions are a mixed bag. Some are vague, some ok, but most are too verbose and do not reinforce the main points. The best parts of the book are the appendices and the tables. I'm sure Dr Wolfson is more then competent, but if you're serious about physics, go with Young or Knight.
Rating:  Summary: pedantic Review: Some people may find this physics book more friendly than, say the Berkeley Physics course textbooks, but really this uses too many words to describe the concepts, and as a result, the time involved in reading about everything is much greater than necessary, and it then does not require a comprehensive understanding of the material. Its mechanics section is unbelievably pedantic. Of course, since electricity and Magnetism is inherently more difficult to understand, the extra words are not quite so superfluous. It is not at all difficult to learn HOW to do the problems without understanding why.
Rating:  Summary: An Excellent introduction to physics Review: This book provides simple explanations of phyical theories. It does not waste words and various subjects are clearly and succintly covered. This is in contrast to the big 2000 page door stops written by Hugh D. Young, where some simple physics takes months to understand. Most of all, this book stirs interest in the subject. I'm no physicist or mathematician, but I think I understood some things like "the rate of change of momentum is proportinal to a Force." How simple! In the author's own words, "this book builds a flexible understanding rather than a memorization of details." In college I used Young's book, and the only way I could pass in that class was by memorizing the highlighted formulas. This is the best introduction to physics besides Lev Landau's books that I have come across. The only bad thing about this book is that answers are not provided for the questions section becasuse the answers are not numerical but require a thoughtful explanation. However, the problems section has answers to odd numbered numerical problems. It is all here in this book. Try it.
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