Study Guide to Physics for Scientists and Engineers 2e

by Wolfson and Richard Wolfson

This Study Guide accompanies the second edition of Physics for Scientists and Engineers. The second edition emphasizes the conceptual unity of physics while providing a solid approach to helping students to solve problems. Skills are developed through end-of-chapter problems and a number of pedagogical aids, including tips boxes, in-chapter exercises, references within examples to related problems found at the ends of chapters, strategy boxes, extended...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0673523691
• ISBN13: 9780673523693
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Book

I bought this book recently and it exceeded every expectation I head. The excellent presentation of the subjects, the quality of images and the huge number of exercises all make this probably one of the best physics books out there. Although this is a calculus based text, vector calculus usage is kept quite low. If you need a text that is heavily using vector calculus you should probably use the Berkeley Physics Course of the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Absolute Necessity for those in physics

I am a senior physics major and I can assure you, if you are looking for an amazing general reference book, this is the book to get. It is essentially broken into 3 major sections. Newtonian Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, and Modern Physics. It has introductory topics on One and Two Dimensional Kinematics, Newtonian Mechanics, Optics, Electricity and Magnetism (including Maxwell's Equations), Thermodynamics, Special Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Nuclear physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology. I first purchased this book about 4 or 5 years ago for an entry level "University Physics" course. At most Universities this book is used for two semesters. It is a calculus based physics book, so if you have not yet had at least Calculus 1 this book will not be very useful for you if you are going to try to work out the problems. By the time you get to the second half of the book I really recommend at least having Calculus 2. With all of the interesting topics available to read about there are some people that might believe that this book can be read as a popular physics book and just ignore the math. I do not at all recommend that. Although the topics are throughly explained, reading this book and ignoring the math would be an injustice. In every class that I have had in physics since purchasing this book I have consistently gone back to reference it for help. This book is second to none and I believe that there are two books necessary to make it in physics (1) Douglas Giancoli "Physics for Scientists and Engineers" 3rd Edition (2) James Stewart "Calculus" 5th Edition. Just one last thing, make sure that if you are considering purchasing this book note that there are two versions of the 3rd edition. One contains a Modern Physics section and one does not. I highly recommend you get the one with the Modern Physics section. All in all this book is the absolute best and I see myself using all through graduate school.

better than serway's text

When i started to use Serway's text for AP physics C, i felt that's a great book. But as i progress, i found Serway's text is so vague and lacked rigor, problem solving, solutions, detailed proof, as appropriete for the level of AP physics C. After using Serway's text for self study for two month, i switched to giancoli's text by friend's recommandation, and i found that it was much better than serway's text in respect that more problem solving, detailed proof are included. I regret that i wrote i review for Serway's text so good. if you are studying calculus-based physics, i recommand you also buy an outline.

Excellent Freshman Physics Textbook

You are blessed if your professor adopts this book as your textbook. This book presents the physics concepts with rare clarity. It abounds with great number of examples and problems. The overall difficulty level of this book is more challenging than other popular college physics textooks that are available today. A good foundation of senior high school honor Physics and AP physics is certainly helpful. Some selection of topics, such as Coriolis Effect, should capture the imaginations of young minds. This book is currently adpoted as textook at UC-Berkeley (Physics 7 series) and MIT (physics 8.01).

Good introduction to physics.

In all fairness to the book, it's not as bad as I made it out to be below. It is a little upsetting to be given tons of equations without any proofs. But the proofs really are beyond the scope of the book. I've looked at other books of the same level since I wrote the original review, and this one has turned out to be better than all the others. The book would've been better if they mentioned a few extra things like how its treatment of electricity and magnetism should be taken as only working in an absolute frame, and is only an approximation to the full treatment.All in all, this book covers so many topics, that no matter what physics you are doing in the future, you'll always be able to find some information in here that won't be mentioned in your other book.It covers everything you need to know for a first mechanics course, a course in waves and modern physics, a first course in electricity and magnetism, plus a lot more that is never touched in class. Calculus is not needed for the mechanics course, but it is used in the book. If you know calculus, then you'll benefit. If you don't, you can skip the "calculus equations", and the rest of the mechanics part of the book will still all be comprehensible.