College Physics
While reviewing this textbook we compared it to two other widely used first year algebra based physics textbooks, Physics by Giancoli and College Physics by Knight, Jones and Field. we have taught many courses using both these standard textbooks. The openstax College Physics text covers all of the topics that the other two texts cover. It is perhaps even more comprehensive than either Giancoli or Knight. For example when introducing electric charge it discusses quarks. The openstax text has 1269 pages in a font that is smaller than either Giancoli or Knight and the text goes right to the edges of the pages. It is unlikely that a typical student in an algebra based introductory course would be able to work their way through the textual part of the book. Giancoli (1004 pages) and Knight (1067 pages) use only 2/3 the width of the page for text and the large margin for pictures or examples. This makes these texts much easier to read than the openstax text. If a student chooses to print the openstax book on regular paper, double sided, it is 8cm thick whereas Giancoli is only 3.5cm and Knight 4cm, including the hard covers. At the end of each chapter the openstax text has a useful glossary of terms encountered in the chapter and a chapter summary that is similar to both Giancoli and Knight. The openstax index is 5 ½ pages long compared to 15 pages in Giancoli and 13 pages in Knight. It has far fewer topics in the index and is missing subcategories under topics such as acceleration, angular momentum and electric circuits. Oddly it has a larger font for the index than the rest of the text so it has more than three times fewer topics in the index than either Giancoli or Knight. The problems at the end of each chapter of the openstax text are its strongest feature. They are similar to those in both Knight and Giancoli. There are an adequate number of them and they have adequate variety and varying difficulty. However, unlike Giancoli and Knight the openstax problems are not labeled according to difficulty, a feature that we as instructors like when assigning problems. An additional feature in the openstax text, that neither Giancoli nor Knight have, is problems labeled Integrated Concepts and problems labeled Construct your own problem.
There were some examples of notation that were not adequately explained, for example the use of F12 on page 639 without explaining that it means the force on particle 1 due to particle 2. Also on page 633 it says "she receives an excess of positive charge" which seems to imply that positive charge moves onto her hair, which is not the case. On page 640 the statement "the force that surrounds an object" is not correct. There are an adequate number of examples in the text with nice color pictures. We believe they are in general accurate and correct, although we didn't go through each one. The type of examples used are the same type as in Giancoli and Knight and we don't think they are biased in any way. There is an instructor solution manual that comes with the text, an excellent feature here is that both the problem and solution are given. This makes choosing homework problems or problems to do in class much more convenient for the instructor. The online homework system WebAssign is available for this OpenStax text. It costs the students a nominal fee per term but we think it is in general an inexpensive alternate system to Mastering Physics which is included with Giancoli and Knight. Unlike Mastering Physics that has every single problem in Giancoli and Knight, Web Assign has only about one third of the problems in the back of each chapter. Both Web Assign and Mastering Physics have links to the text in many of the problems. However, where Mastering Physics has links to the appropriate pages for students to read before attempting a problem, Web Assign links to the beginning of the appropriate chapter. Mastering Physics is a much more comprehensive online homework system than Web Assign; it has tutorials, conceptual questions, and a test bank. The links to the PhET Interactive Simulations in the openstax text are also available on Mastering Physics for both Giancoli and Knight.
Most of the content in a physics text is over 200 years old so being up to date isn't an issue. However, this text also includes many modern applications of physics such as medical applications of nuclear physics and particle physics. It also has a chapter called Frontiers of Physics that is up to date. In this regard it is equally as good as Giancoli and Knight and the risk of it becoming obsolete is negligible.
We found that the openstax text is quite wordy in its explanation of concepts. For example it takes about 10 lines to explain the concept of position whereas Giancoli uses one clear and concise sentence and Knight uses a simple example to explain the concept. The definition of position in the glossary of the openstax text at the end of the chapter is too vague. We think students in general have a very difficult time reading physics textbooks and if the explanations are too long they get lost. We expect this will be the case for most students immediately in the early chapters of this text.
The chapters in the text are organized in a consistent fashion throughout the book. The notation is also consistent.
It would be easy to pick individual chapters of this book to put together into 2 separate one semester courses just like any standard textbook.
The topics in this text are organized in the same order as both Giancoli and Knight. The Open Stax text has 34 chapters whereas Giancoli has 33 and Knight has 30.
The font in the openstax text is Arial and is smaller than the Times New Roman used in both Giancoli and Knight. It is also more closely spaced and goes to the edge of the pages. It is more difficult to read in print than either Giancoli or Knight but on a computer the student could zoom in to whatever resolution they choose.
We didn't notice any grammatical errors.
We agree with this statement however since the text originates in the United States it refers to places and things in the US and not Canada. This is true of both Giancoli and Knight.
Instructors and physics departments should be very careful about choosing this textbook simply because it is free. The best existing textbooks are much better than the Open Stax textbook notwithstanding the cost implications. Overall we think that this text is overly comprehensive for a first year algebra based physics course. It explains many things that are best left for an instructor to discuss in class but should not require students to read. It would be a good reference for new teachers preparing lecture notes. We think that typical students would feel overwhelmed when trying to read this text. However, it would be appropriate as a resource for problems or specific explanations.
This review originated in the BC Open Textbook Collection and is licensed under CC BY-ND.