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| Physics: Principles and Problems | 
 enlarge | Authors: Paul W. Zitzewitz, T. G. Elliott, Haase, Kathleen A. Harper, Herzog, Nelson, Friedrich Schiller, Zorn
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Glencoe
Category: Book
List Price: $94.00
Buy Used: $42.95
You Save: $51.05 (54%)
New (21) Used (39) from $42.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 294160
Format: Student Edition
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 943
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.8
Dimensions (in): 11 x 8.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0078458137
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.072
EAN: 9780078458132
ASIN: 0078458137
Publication Date: September 15, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Hardcover. Binding is tight. Dust jacket is missing. Moderate wear to cover. Some pages show wear. Binding looks worn. Cover edges are peeling. Binding is starting to tear at back cover.
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Product Description
This book lets you understand the principles and problems of physics.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
Poor choice for a physics text October 16, 2001
18 out of 22 found this review helpful
I am a highschool senior and am using this text for my honors physics class. I would consider myself a strong science student but this textbook is making physics extremely frustrating. We have only covered the first six chapters, but I am already noticing serious problems. The book is far from strait forward, with pages dedicated to superflous examples of things that seem to be common sense, while other pages are filled with silly diagrams that do little to help me understand the material. In many chapters the author dedicates more space to explaining how to draw diagrams of problems than he does explaining how to solve them. Consequently I often find that after reading a chapter I understand little more than how to draw pictures. The book is clearly oriented towards visual learners with little left over for the rest of us. In other chapters the material is organized in a way that seems irrational. Newton's Laws, for example, are not placed together as one would expect, rather they are scattered out of order over a 20 page chapter, making it more difficult to put the pieces together and get the big picture. The books one redeeming feature (and the reason it got the second star) is that it contains plenty of practice problems with more available online. Some of the problems even have detailed explanations and answers in the back, but often these answers are wrong, which only adds to my frustration. As I said I have only been through the first six chapter but if they are any indication, this is not a good text for an honors physics class.
 Weak book January 7, 2003
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
This book is very colorful and full of wonderful photos. Yet photos and color alone will not help you learn physics. The example problems they give are not explained step-by-step in a way that makes the application clearer. Worse yet the problems may be wrong some of the time. There are a few chapters that could be combined instead of splitting them up. Also, Newton's Laws are totally isolated from each other instead of being grouped together. The only way (at least that I know) to suceed in phyiscs is to work the problems. The book has a wonderful assortment of problems- yet no solutions or even answers are found in the back. Since most physics teachers won't give credit without work I don't see why putting the answers in the back could hurt. Overall the book is weak. I would read this book and do the homework assigned from the book, but my preparation for a test would come from a review book and a practice book with hundreds of solved problems (Schaum's or REA). That seems to work best for me. Oh and the last part in any physics course that determines how good you do is the teacher. For me I am not so lucky. But to you I wish the best of luck. You may have the same problems with this book that my whole class and apparantly other schools have had, or you will do well.
Physics Principles and Problems January 18, 2002
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is acually Jonathan Ray of Midlothian Virginia. I have spent many a late night pondering over the absutities I have read in my physics book. I am atempting to learn physics from this book but it seems that all I am learning is how to draw silly little pictures. The answers in the back of the book to the practice problems are wrong tothe point that I am woried when I get an answer that agrees with the the back of the book. On top of this there are numerous typeos on the text. On top of this there is no actual organization in the book as one has to read several chapters to understan Newton's laws which are presented out of order I might add. Overall a very confusing text that is not worth the paper it is printed on.
34%*(65)*&##354*#(76^7)(216)= September 13, 2003
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Exactly. This is what the book looks like if you go to a store right now and open it. This book is virtually a math book although physics is about 60% math and 30% science information, this book is like 95% to 5%. Not only that the explainations for some of the problems are really bad. The reason why people think physics is hard is b/c of books like these that make it hard. THEIR are even mistakes in the formulas they use and they dont round numbers to significant digits. Im the top of my class in physics only b/c i like science, this book can change your mind real fast. The book does not explain who and how which is vital in learnig and passing any science test. For example Isaac Newton proposed the law of gravity. It just tells you concepts and terms that came from nowhere. The only good part about it is webassign that lets you practice problems online. d.
Have I just encountered the worst book in all of history? November 28, 2005
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Quite possibly.
While I'm not nearly so far as some of these reviewers were when they reviewed the book, this physics book has pushed me so far beyond the reaches of my patience that I find no reason why I should not share with you how horribly this book fails to explain physics anyway.
In all my years of science classes, I have never come across a book this inept at conveying concepts. Generally my rule of thumb is, if you can look through a chapter, find the paragraph or so of information you need to answer a question or solve a problem, maybe an example problem to look at, then you've got a good book before you. This is not one such book.
Though the chapters are short, there is no conciseness or organization to the information within them. In order to learn a concept, you must trudge through three pages of very very very watered down information (who doesn't understand RISE over RUN equals SLOPE?). Normally, if a person gets impatient with the watered down stuff, they can skip to a box that has the equations, or a diagram with a caption underneath it. But I've discovered that this is impossible to do here. The text basically is the caption of all the wonderfully abundant diagrams and photographs provided AND the lesson material all in one.
And as for the diagrams, graphs, and other visuals, they seem to be poorly placed on the pages. Often times they are not labeled well enough to know what paragraph it is associated with, as if they were only afterwards slapped onto the page (which could explain why some of the explanations of these diagrams are downright cryptic).
There is no effectiveness to the method the author uses to explain concepts; there seems to be a meaningless abundance of explanation on how to draw diagrams, but when it comes down to the concepts, there's little to work with. If he was more succinct and organized, perhaps physics would make sense to many more students that have to work with this book.
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