Customer Rating:  
Summary: Glad to see I'm not the only one who...
Comment: ...thinks this book is hard to understand. I switched out of AP Physics B the first week haha.
The book does not really try to "teach" you physics. I feel like it just "talks" about physics.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good
Comment: The book is pretty good. It is maybe more for the typical advance or college level student. It can be improved if it provides a more thorough explanation but still does a good job explaining easy question for physics. It provides a wide variety of problems. Also it has a scale of difficulty of the problem. Overall I am quiet satisfied with the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: errors in Giancoli
Comment: 6th Edition: For number 24, pg. 40, it is incorrect to ask about the "average acceleration" of the sprinter. One has to assume that the rate of acceleration is constant or one will not be able to solve the problem.
This is just one of many errors in this book, although none of the errors I have seen are severe.
The problem reads:
"A world-class sprinter can burst out of the blocks to essentially top speed of about 11.5 m/s in the first 15.0 m of the race. What is the average acceleration of the sprinter, and how long does it take her to reach top speed?"
To figure out why one cannot find the average acceleration without assuming that the acceleration is constant, imagine that the sprinter falls off the blocks, picks herself up and then blasts up to 11.5 m/s within the 15.0 m. Her average acceleration is (v - vo) / t, but t in this case is much larger than it would be compared to the normal situation where she pushes off and essentially accelerates uniformly. But remember, the problem only asks for average acceleration!
More mathematically to the point, let her velocity be v = c t^2, instead of the usual v = a t. This is not disallowed by the notion of average acceleration, but it does lead to different answers. Therefore, one needs the additional assumption that acceleration is constant.
Since runners don't accelerate at a uniform rate, we could state that we are simplifying the problem with this assumption, but Giancoli doesn't do this. This is an example of his sloppiness in the name of pedagogy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Three words. Not very good.
Comment: Those three words really are a very good description. The book isn't very good at all. I used this book in AP Physics (B), in all honesty it was just terrible. It was uninteresting, and confusing. If you're going to buy an introductory Physics book, consider Physics (2 Vol. Set). But as always you can't really go off of another person's opinion, as everyone seems to learn best in their own unique styles, so scan through the books.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Another Algebra-Based Physics Textbook!
Comment: I have taken three straight years of Physics in highschool. I took it sophomore, junior, and now senior year. Each year, I used a different book. I was given this book for AP Physics B (Junior Year), an algebra-based Advanced Placement Physics course.
Overall, the book's examples don't truly help much with the more difficult problems. Explanations aren't very clear, and the key points aren't highlighted. Examples are boring, and questions are less than exciting. How am I to be motivated to perform numerous number crunches with algebra when the questions and writing are so dry?
There is a lot of information in this book, and some of the explanations are good (it's pretty difficult to mess up Kinematics), but the book stumbles in its explanations of many important Physics topics--including Fluid Mechanics and Modern Physics.
Overall, not a great text, but it is very difficult to find a nice Algebra-based Physics text that is as intellectually challenging and in depth. Be wary, if you are not a Physics geek, you will have a hard time plowing through this book.
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