Product Description

Now in its commemorative tenth edition, Sears and Zemansky's University Physics remains the classic text for today's students. Adhering to the highest standards of integrity and incorporating some of the findings of current research in physics education, the text enables students to develop physical intuition and build strong problem-solving skills. It also points out conceptual and computational pitfalls that commonly plague beginning physics students and provides them with explicit strategies for analyzing physical situations and solving problems. In addition, the text supplies a comprehensive range of high-quality problem sets developed and refined over the past five decades.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #346734 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1274 pages

Book Info
Emphasizes the fundamental principles of physics and how to apply them. Designed to help students develop physical intuition, and help them build strong problem-solving skills.

About the Author

Roger A. Freedman is a Lecturer in Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Freedman was an undergraduate at the University of California campuses in San Diego and Los Angeles, and did his doctoral research in nuclear theory at Stanford University under the direction of Professor J. Dirk Walecka. He came to UCSB in 1981 after three years teaching and doing research at the University of Washington.

At UCSB, Dr. Freedman teaches in both the Department of Physics and the College of Creative Studies, a branch of the university intended for highly gifted and motivated undergraduates. He has publishes research in nuclear physics, elementary particle physics, and laser physics. In recent years, he has helped to develop computer-based tools for learning introductory physics and astronomy.

When not in the classroom or slaving over a computer, Dr. Freedman can be found either flying (he holds a commercial pilot's license) or driving with his wife Caroline in their 1955 Nash Metropolitan.

T.R. Sandin is Professor of Physics at North Carolina A&T State University. He received his B.S. in physics from Santa Clara University and his M.S. and Ph.D from Purdue University. He has received awards for excellence in teaching from both Purdue University and NC A&T. He has published research articles in low-temperature solid state physics, the Mossbauer effect, ferromagnetic anisotropy, and physics teaching.

Customer Reviews

A decent intro physics book
I think this is a very good introductory physics book. Most of the time, students who give bad reviews to this kind of book just do not know how to study themselves. If you keep asking for solutions manual, all you are saying is that you just want to regurgitate what somebody else has done before...sorry, but science or engineering doesn't work that way. You have to actually use your brain to think VERY CAREFULLY about what you are doing --- learning how to do THAT is probably the only thing you would get out of studying science. You'll forget formulae and examples anyways. When I used the book as a TA, I mostly heard that "I get more out of reading the text than attending lectures." I guess it says something about the faculty quality of my school, but then, I think the topics are very carefully presented, not much of leap of reasoning is necessary, etc. I sometimes felt the wording of the end-of-chapter problems can be a bit confusing, though.

Also, compared to some other intro calculus based physics book (such as Holliday & Resnick), the book feels a bit less rigorous, which may actually be good --- I don't know why that is, but it might be related to the fact that the the school where the auther appears to teach has a reputation for very low quality undergraduates. But if that helped to make this textbook even better, that's a good thing. For budding engineers and others who need calc based intro physics, I think the book is excellent. For physicists, I might go with a more rigorous book.

An excellent book for study.
I find this book to be very good at explaining the concepts of physics. In addition to clearly presenting principles and derivations of those principles, it also clearly addresses issues that are difficult for students to understand. There are numerous examples of how to apply the principles to problems. Some examples are traditional problems that have been around as long as anyone can recall, others are new. This is not to be considered an easy book, nor is the study of physics easy. You must really work to understand the material. To this end there are problems whose solution is not included in the text; the reason is to avoid the plug-and-chug attitude that many people have about physics - that memorizing formulas and techniques are all that are necessary to understand physics. As someone who has been teaching physics for more than 20 years I can tell you that this book is good for both the student and the instructor.

Horrible Physics Book
This is the worst textbook I have ever read. The book does not prepare you to do a lot of the problems at the end of each chapter. There are some problems that take hours to complete, even though they should really only take a few minutes, simply because the book does not prepare you for certain types of problems. A word of advice to the authors: stay in the lab, stick to research, because you obviously have no idea how to educate students.