Fundamentals of Physics, Extended

As many reviewers have noted, this is a great physics book used widely in university technical programs as a first course in technical physics, with calculus. I find it is the one book I start with when trying to understand physical concepts at a useful but basic level. It has broad coverage and is well written . To go beyond this book requires specialized books on each topic of interest (electromagnetics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, etc.). I really like the kindle formatting (kindle on ipad air, or kindle pc app). The equations and figures are clear and readable. I find it much nicer reading the kindle version than lugging around a big heavy book.

The treatment is sound, thorough, and clear. I’ve owned the early editions of Halliday and Resnick for years. I’m very happy that I updated my library with this 10th edition. The topics are covered in a very logical order. The study features and worked examples are outstanding. Don’t hesitate to buy this book! Reading it is awesome on the Kindle app on the iPad.

I took the introductory physics classes at U.C. Berkeley in 1972 -4 using the second edition (1966 ), and wanted to go over some of the topics again. I started with the 2nd edition which I kept, but became frustrated with the use of pounds and feet units. I decided to update to the 10th edition and it is all S.I. units making the calculations so much simpler. I was very pleased to see that Resnick and Halliday's textbook was still in print because it was a very fine book to learn physics. The 10th edition is much superior to the second because the pages are larger, the examples clearer, and the problems at the back of each chapter more numerous. There is an answer book with worked problems available as a separate book for those of us that are physics challenged. Much of the credit for the improvement must go to Professor Jearl Walker who has spent a lot of time and thought on this book. My appreciation to Professor Walker. My first negative comment is that the sample problems are full of tricks. I have tried to work these sample problems and rarely get the correct answer because I run into a dead end or the calculations become so immense that I make an error somewhere in the page or pages of calculations. The dead ends seem to be deliberate on the part of the author to show how these can be over come. This is good but frustrating. Some of the tricks are mathematical. One problem had two equations with three unknowns. By dividing the equation with the sin ( theta ) by the one with the cos( theta ) two of the unknowns cancel and what remains is a tan( theta ) which is easily found. The universe would have ended before I thought of doing this. The second negative comment is that the author with holds vital information that is needed to solve the problems. This first occurred in the chapter on the kinetic theory of gasses. There are two ways to find the Work done in an isothermal expansion, the author only gives one. There are two ways to find the Work done in an isobaric expansion, the author only gives one. The way I found these other two equations in one of the problems at the end of the chapter. I could not solve the problem with the equations in the book, so I went to the Student Solutions Manual and found the problem worked very simply with two new equations. The student in an introductory course of physics should not be expected to derive new thermodynamic equations. In another case I had to go online to a physics tutorial to find the equations needed to solve a problem. Third negative comment is that I detect a lack of teaching commitment after chapter 20. I was very impressed with the clear presentation of the material through chapter 20, thermodynamics. Starting with chapter 21 ( electro-magnetism ) the teaching deteriorates. The concepts are not thoroughly explained and even some of the equations are less than clear. I just ran into an equation in chapter 29 that finds the magnetic field of a solenoid: B = u n i The variable n is the number of windings divided by the length of the solenoid. This is stated in the text but up to this point n always represented only the number of something and not divided by anything. A better equation and consistent with all that has gone before is B = u n i / L I have ordered another college physics textbook so I can get a second view point of the material. The textbook is very good through chapter 20 and deserves 5 stars. After chapter 20 it rates a 3 star.

awesome book for college!! halliday and resnick are the best authors there can ever be for a physics textbook!! the book is clearly laid out and written in simple language that is fun and enjoyable and easy to understand. there are soo many pros bout this book that i cant really find a con!!

Exactly what I needed for almost 100 dollars less than the heavy, bulky paper copy. Original pagination kept so it was very easy to use. I invested in a 128 gb iPad Air 2 for college and figured i would end up making back my money just from the savings and this book alone paid back about 10% of what I spent on the ipad and was much easier to carry around than a 1500 page book

Love my textbook!!! As a future engineer, many physics courses and many classes related to physics. A must get since i always have to back to it.

This book served my for 3 semesters at our community college, its a good resource, but its hard to read, I guess any physics book would be, little hard to compare it to something else since I don't recall my high school one. I believe that the book has some nice examples, but the homework is extremely hard, and some of them are just algebra/calculus tricks. As I said I used this book for 3 semesters, 3 different professors. They were split into kinematics, thermo/electricity/magnetism, and nuclear/quantum/waves. I truly believe the professors are the ones that make the class and not the book, the book is a supplement to how some one will teach and not teach the book. I say this because my first instructor would make us read a chapter have discussion and quiz once a week and do homework and call it good. Hated the class but the book made most of it tolerable because of the nice examples. Second semester I only opened the book to do the assigned homework problems. Everything was taught out of slides, and discussion quizzes after each class periods. The most challenging class I have taken, the most fun and I believe I learned so much more than if I had read the book and saw their examples. Third semester we were assigned sections to read and we had a reading quiz and a review from the class before. I started to hate the book again, it was so dull and in the end started to just read the highlights at the end of the chapter, the slides of my instructor were pretty much the pages in the book. Most of it made no sense, and neither did the lectures, but discussion problems and group sessions and together we got through it. Bottom line the book its clean, derives a lot of the formulas if you enjoy that, good for you, some of us just need to understand how to apply them. There are a lot of nice examples for simple cases, like I said the homework is so much more challenging. The book itself fell apart halfway through the first semester, some of my class mates books had no cover within in weeks, super heavy book, but take into consideration I only had to spend 100 bucks for 3 different classes. If you already know what you are doing, this is probably a good reference book, even then some of the questions stumped some of our faculty tutors. More likely you buy this for a class not to just read for fun.

School textbook. GREAT condition, GREAT price, super fast shipping. The extended part has a couple extra chapters.

Très agréable à lire et très abordable. L'ouvrage est très complet avec un sens pédagogique remarquable (les mathématiques sont là bien sûr, mais ne sont pas un frein à la compréhension des principes physiques). De très nombreux exemples, de très nombreux problèmes.

good book but the price is too high