Cheap Physics for Scientists and Engineers (Book) (Paul M. Fishbane, Stephen Gasiorowicz, Stephen T. Thornton) Price

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Customer Reviews of Physics for Scientists and Engineers

Comprehensive and Challenging: Excellent for Self-Study
As a doctoral student studying Clinical Neuroscience, I have studied a lot of statistics and data analysis methods, and I wanted to learn more about physics. With a knowledge of math up through differential equations and the luxury of self-study time, I wanted a comprehensive and calculus-based introduction to physics text that I could learn from on my own, with plenty of examples. I orginally began studying Halliday-Resnick-Walker, which provides many excellent examples, but teaches physics in rather a "cookbook" fashion. Having now completed 6 chapters of text and odd-numbered exercises in Fishbane et al. 2nd ed. Extended, I would say that Fishbane et al. is more detailed, rigourous, and comprehensive; it can be challenging at times to understand some of the concepts presented and one needs to take some time and think deeply about what they mean, but that is the nature of science. Many of the exercises can be challenging, but once you figure them out and complete them, you feel that you really know something solid. Fishbane et al. came bundled with LOGAL's Physic's CD, which is absolutely outstanding as an interactive learning tool; the "experiments" with function parameters and the animation really bring the physics concepts and mathematics to life. I feel that Fishbane et al. teaches physics in a thorough and thought provoking manner. I only wish that they would have kept in all those derivations from the last edition.

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not meant for learning physics
I had the author of this book as my professor for Physics. We used this textbook and it was just really, a waste of our money. The textbook did nothing to help us learn physics in any way at all. It just confuses you more when the author takes the most complicated path to teach you a concept when it could be explained so much simpler. I had already taken a college-level physics class before this, and there are so many other better textbooks out there than this one. I have to say that they do have colorful and detailed illustrations which sometimes help, but the wording needs much help.

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WORST TEXTBOOK EVER
Of course I haven't read every textbook ever written; the title of this review is hyperbolic (in the semantic sense).

But seriously, I don't know what the target audience for this book is, but it couldn't possibly be undergraduates trying to learn physics. The following are the flaws which come to mind most immediately:

1) Definitions of terms are moving targets. No term that is defined in this book is used in the same sense twice. You can expect at least three "definitions" of a term over the course of one chapter, and even more over the course of several chapters. This has made it very difficult for me to retain any of the information presented.
2) It's extremely cluttered. Ninety-nine percent of the book is devoted to very specific problems rather than giving lucid explanations of general principles which would lead to a clear understanding of the general principles. It's very difficult to solve specific problems without a clear understanding of the general principles that can be applied to achieve a solution.
3) The author's derivations of equations are frequently very confusing. My confusion generally is caused by one of two things:
a) very large steps are frequently made without any explanation of what math was being done to get from one line to the next.
b) typographical errors are plentiful, so I never know if it's some math that I haven't done between the steps or if it's actually an error.
In the end I'm frequently immobilized by baffling conclusions that the author draws seemingly out of nowhere.

To sum this all up, I might wish this book on my worst enemy after it goes through another five editions.