Best help for Physics: Mechanics and Heat students

[asimon2008]

I am a freshman student in college taking Physics: Mechanics and Heat. I wanted to know what websites are good(breaks it down really easy to understand physics and what ebooks are there for students. I have one book that I am going to read called Physics for Dummies. The book I am using for class is The Fundamentals of Physics 8th Edition by David Halliday. This is all the help I need.

 

[tatiana_eggs]

I found the Halliday book to be a great read, but if you need more visual aid and lecturing to learn, you should check out http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F8BB1DD3C1EB0001".

 

[Acut]

Walter Lewin's lectures are terrific!
They're pretty much the reason why I like Physics!

Well, when I was studying these subjects I used Tipler in the beginning. I think he does a good job introducing the basics, and it has the answers for 50% of the problems. However, it's expensive (at least in my country). I've heard good things about Halliday, but I've never read/used it.

If you plan to know more mechanics than just the enough, Tipler isn't very good (notice there's a difference between an easy book and a "shallow" book). Tipler is too shallow. You can very well start with it, but if you want more challenge and depth, you need to read other authors (It's what I did). It's not a defect of Tipler, simply put, the goal of the book isn't very deep.

Tipler covers simple thermodynamics too. But if you're actually interested in heat transfer or somewhat more complicated thermodynamics, ask me and I will put links for resources which were released for free acess over the internet by its authors.

 

[Acut]

By the way, here's a link to MIT's OCW. It has the same videos that there are on youtube that tatiana has posted, but contains more materials (tests and assignments with answers). They were very helpful for me:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-IFall1999/CourseHome/index.htm

 

[tatiana_eggs]

Walter Lewin was pretty much my inspiration to study physics as well! I was going to post that link, but I had visited it the other day and it said that the videos were "removed by author." Just checked now and they are up and running! Thank gosh.