Phys book on level of Halliday in style of Spivak

[sl.124]

I've been trying to learn introductory physics for about a month now from a copy of Halliday 6th ed with some supplements from MITs 8.01 and an electronic copy of Feynman's lectures (I'm at about chapter/lecture 10 give or take in all of them) and I'm finding the presentation in Halliday rather uninspiring. It's a great reference book I think, but I find the presentation lacking.

This is contrasted with Feynman (but no corresponding problems) and Spivak's "Calculus", not a physics book, but I think it combines the presentation of Feynman with great problems that seem to have some mathematical significance. For example, I just finished deriving the Lagrangian interpolation formula, which is both an interesting question (given some points on a graph, what is a polynomial function that goes through all of them?) and one that seems to have some mathematical significance.

So basically what I'm looking for is physics book on the level of Halliday but that has the presentation of Feynman and the problems of Spivak (Spivak's presentation is as good as Feynman too).

Thanks
S.L.

(as an addendum: basically, is there a physics book that lays out experimental results/first principles and guides you in deriving its consequences? The rocket equations are an example of this, Halliday just kinda throws it at you and tells you to plug some numbers in...)

 

[member 553083]

I would recommend "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" by Richard Feynman, Robert Leighton and Matthew Sands. This book is a classic for physics and contains a lot of the same topics as Halliday's textbook, but in a much more engaging and interesting way. It has problems throughout the text, so you can practice your understanding of the material as you go along. The book also provides some great insights into how to think about physics problems and concepts.