physics

This textbook was very hard to understand. The authors discuss the material in such a way that unless you spend all your time reading their book, you won't ever get it. I spent way too much time over a full academic year trying to figure out what the book meant. And when I worked the problems, I often times didn't understand the material well enough to even begin to know how to approach them. The problems in this book are usually set up so that you have to derive your own equations *based on* the equations the authors discuss. The authors take a very loopy, confusing approach to thermodynamics (I had to try to forget a lot of the stuff I learned from this book when I took Physical Chemistry courses). Further, the chapters on thermo are not nearly complete enough, and the analogies used are usually bad. This book covers all the basic topics, like any other standard physics text, but the level of discussion is just slightly too advanced for the John Doe taking a General Calculus-based Physics class, whose only background is high school physics.
Look into some other textbooks...I hear Serway's book is
good.

Alright, so of course this is the book required by just about every college in the country these days in their introductory physics courses---well, it shouldn't be. The authors certainly provide mathematical motivation for the concepts they cover, but certainly don't give adequate real-world motivation for concepts. Oh yeah, so, as one idiot reviewer who thinks he's some kind of precocious student said, this book helped him and his high school buddies get fives on the AP Test---WELL BIG DEAL IDIOT!!! GOOD FOR YOU!! I only managed to do that in my freshman year of highschool so I guess it must be really hard or something--*cough* Well, in the real world of people who actually know anything about physics or math or any field, getting a five on the AP exam in highschool isn't anything special. Basically, this book will prepare you to pass exams and standardized tests--it won't give you understanding. For that, go somewhere worthwhile---for example, the Feynman Lectures on Physics, all three volumes of which cost about half as much as Halliday and Resnick's book.

Our physics department decided to switch to this book last year, and I have been trying to figure out which edition to buy.. "extended enhanced problem edition", "extended", "enhanced"? How about throwing in a student's companion text that contains "chapter extensions?"? What about getting the right Solutions manual? only 30% of the solutions are in it? And now I just found out they have published (another?) new 7th edition which no doubt will have a brand new array of essential supplements and extensions. Why all these editions and supplements?