Serway Physics for Scientists & Engineers

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The discussion critiques a specific physics textbook, highlighting its reliance on formulaic problem-solving without adequate explanation of underlying concepts. Users express dissatisfaction with its verbosity and the use of confusing examples that do not effectively teach the material. In contrast, many participants recommend Halliday's "Fundamentals of Physics" for its clearer explanations and better presentation. Some mention using other textbooks, like Sears and Zemansky's "University Physics," which they find more concise and comprehensible, particularly in areas like thermodynamics. Overall, the consensus leans towards favoring Halliday for its instructional quality over the criticized textbook.
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What do you all think of this textbook? It seems to me to be a lot of plug in chug to get formulas without an explanation for the motivation and just a lot of algebra
 
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When I was starting my studies I checked it out, can't say I liked it that much either.
 
We are using it in my physics classes. To me it is super verbose with the weirdest examples that don't really give you an idea on doing other problems of the topic.

A lot of people on the forum seems to like the book by Halliday: Fundamentals of Physics.

Also have a look at the different books in the library that fits your way of learning.
 
I'm using it at the moment, not great but still usable. Only using it cause I lack the mathematical background for K&K's mechanics book. I think most standard first-year textbooks are like that...though I've read through bits of the 7th edition of Sears and Zermansky's 'University Physics' and liked their explanations better than Serway's text, short but clear (e.g. in Serway's book, the thermodynamics part wasn't clear at all, S&Z's text was shorter for that part but made much more sense)
 
I'd add a plus 1 to Halliday to. The Serway book pissed me off a lot because I felt like it tried to sound as mega smart as possible when explaining simple concepts like what capcitance is dependent on for example...
 
I've read through the Mechanics section for both Serway and Halliday, and I got to say I like the Halliday text better. I felt that the overall presentation of Halliday was better
 
The book is fascinating. If your education includes a typical math degree curriculum, with Lebesgue integration, functional analysis, etc, it teaches QFT with only a passing acquaintance of ordinary QM you would get at HS. However, I would read Lenny Susskind's book on QM first. Purchased a copy straight away, but it will not arrive until the end of December; however, Scribd has a PDF I am now studying. The first part introduces distribution theory (and other related concepts), which...
I've gone through the Standard turbulence textbooks such as Pope's Turbulent Flows and Wilcox' Turbulent modelling for CFD which mostly Covers RANS and the closure models. I want to jump more into DNS but most of the work i've been able to come across is too "practical" and not much explanation of the theory behind it. I wonder if there is a book that takes a theoretical approach to Turbulence starting from the full Navier Stokes Equations and developing from there, instead of jumping from...

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