ISBN0-534-99723-6

I am not at all impressed with the 7th ed. I am now using another textbook instead of the the College Physics 7th ed required for my class.
The text itself if so-so. The text explanations of concepts are unclear and unnecessarily wordy, not the worst out there but certainly nothing to scream about. One of the irritating tendencies was that simple explanations of even basic concepts were few and far between, and often hidden in the middle of muddy piles of minor trivia. But these are not my major gripes.
What I really dont like: The makings of the text are simply sloppy. Questions covering ideas not mentioned in the book, incorrect answers, or improperly-referenced answers abound. The pages are crammed with so much visual clutter it's hard to find important points. The solutions manual only covers 20% of the questions! Nearly every other textbook covers all odd-numbered, sometimes even ALL of them! Yet this one still costs just as much. You have to submit personal information just to access the "free" website, which doesnt have that much anyways.
For crying out loud, the guy wrote this edition had to come on here to give the ratings for the book a boost! And one other 5-star rater was almost certainly someone from the book's publisher or team. Read through the ratings, you will see which one I mean.

I am a chemistry teacher and I am taking a college physics course as a review for an exam. The text has problems worked out but they are difficult to follow, and the problems at the end of the chapter are entirely impossible. It seems one person wrote the text and a different person wrote the end of text questions and another wrote the solutions. I am using other texts to help but unfortunately my teacher requires me to solve problems from this text. May God bless everyone who has to use this text. Teachers, professors, please rethink using this text.

I am by no means incompetent, as I am an honors student and have no problem getting strait A's in calculus, linear algebra and object oriented programming, but this book is abysmal and almost impossible to follow. The book is horrible on so many levels. First off, many of the chapters start off throwing equations at you, and offer no clarity as to the purpose of the equation. The text very poorly explains concepts and the problems given throughout the book are even worse. The problems given during the chapters literally throw information out at you that was'nt ever touch upon in the entire chapter, and to make matters worse, i've counted 4 problems that have incorrect solutions, and thats only chapter 2! This is a very poorly written, even worse explained book. I dont mind sadistically difficult problems at the end of a chapter, if the book did a good job of teaching me the concepts and computations to answer the problem, unfortunately this book does neither. Whats funny is that our teacher started the semester by saying, he does'nt like the book, but were using it while he researches a better book for us to use. Sadly, I could have walked into a book store, and grabbed ANY physics book, and it would have been better then this one. Luckily I have several other physics books that peice together the missing information for me, but for a textbook that students depend on to learn the subject, it should'nt be required.

I am in a beginner physics class this semester and this book is the required text. So far it is like trying to read Greek. I am a relatively good student with the ability to figure out problems but no matter the wording used or the examples given, this book is just plain confusing. The problems at the end of the chapters are rediculously hard and don't seem to be covered in the least little bit within the chapter. The author's attempt at explaining the Pythagorean Theorem was even confusing, shouldn't that be one of the easier ideas? I think I'm in big trouble!!!!!

This book is a terrible, terrible waste of a textbook. The authors spend quite a bit of time talking about absolutely nothing in the book. They oftentimes show examples that are very trite and obvious for anyone to do, but then assign much harder problems. I was very annoyed that they never even bothered to do a complete Kirchoff's rules circuit problem. They emphasize absolutely NO conceptual understanding of the material. I can cite no redeeming qualities of the book except perhaps for decent diagrams.

This is written as a graduate physicist; I am no stranger to difficult physics problems. The problems jump from stupidly easy to difficult in a way that is hard for first years, and I sympathize with their difficulty with this book.