The Adventure of Physics - Vol. I: Fall, Flow, and Heat

Reviewed by Dipti Sharma, Contract/Adjunct Professor of Physics, Bunker Hill Community College on 6/27/20

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

This book is a book of series and in the 1st part of the book, everything those need to be in Physics I book is explained related to motion and examples of motion from real world. It is good comprehensive book on Physics I.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

This book is used good grammar and English and has no errors in writing and typing. It is written with good accuracy from the start to the end.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

This textbook covers all topics of a usual Physics I book starting from measurement to the oscillations and fluids. The unique thing in this book is every chapter is related to the name of "Motion" and same as this title, every chapter describes concepts of Physics in the same way. Every chapter and topic is completely relevant to the chapters and topics usually taught in Physics I with good examples from real world.

Clarity rating: 5

The text in the book is written in clear language of English and in good grammar although it also uses some quotes in different language which increases beauty of the book if reader can understand it.

Consistency rating: 5

The text written in the book is completely consistent to the subject matter and to the real world applications. They follow the topic and concepts of Physics described in each chapter. They also follow the trend and flow of the subject matter as usually mentioned and described in General Physics I textbooks.

Modularity rating: 5

The modularity of the textbook is fine. Contents of the chapters are written precisely with good explanation in small parts with images, pictures, diagrams, figures, data table, examples and easily understandable by reader of all levels.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

Organization of each chapter, chapter material, concepts are written in good order following with equations and numbering them.

Interface rating: 5

Yes, the text is free of significant interface issues, including navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The textbook is written with good grammar without any errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The text is culturally insensitive.

Comments

This book is a good textbook in Physics to teach or use it in teaching of Physics I courses without calculus where instructor need to focus more examples related to motions and also show a good connection of concepts of Physics to the real world application on Earth and in space. This is textbook is good for anybody who is curious about motion in nature. How do things, people, animals, images and empty space move? The answer leads o many adventures; this volume presents the best ones about everyday motion.

Reviewed by Aaron Coyner, Adjunct Professor, Southwestern Oregon Community College on 8/21/16

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

Schiller deserves some credit for attempting to address as many topics as he does in this volume alone. Many of the topics are suitable for an upper division course in physics. However, in attempting to be comprehensive, the depth of coverage varies from topic to topic, making it very difficult to recommend a particular level of course for the book. Upper division students may find some topics covered superficially for their needs; however, lower division students may struggle to get a firm grasp of early discussions of time and motion without being overwhelmed. I commend Schiller for his discussions of practical examples where applicable as practical use of physical principles is something that incoming physics students typically request.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

The physics presented is largely accurate. There are issues of interpretation of a number of concepts and phrases. The discussion of entropy is while mostly accurate somewhat cloudy to wade through because of the nature of the presentation and the emphasized components. The discussion of force as a momentum flow is understandable conceptually but from the perspective of an undergraduate text is a deviation from standard terminology. The discussion of the nature of time is still in some respects a philosophical debate. Schiller’s presentation however, seems a bit heavy handed and certain that his perspective is the correct one and seems to lecture any readers with opposing views.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

Schiller includes references to many ongoing current research topics and physical applications. To the best of my knowledge the statements made about these topics are true. Many of them are just passing mentions, limited on detail or insight, but it is worth noting the variety of new research included.

Clarity rating: 2

Schiller’s text ranges wildly from very dense and at times very philosophical in nature to at times very superficial. The text and the mathematical levels vary with topic making it a very difficult for incoming undergraduates to get a foot hold in the subject matter. I appreciate that Schiller offers challenge questions to make the reader think about the topics as progress is made. However, I believe student would have liked to have seen some of the problems worked out as math examples in the text. Yes, the solutions and hints are in the back, but letting students see the equations and methods at work is often beneficial. I would like to make a side note that the inclusion of seemingly random quotes from random sources serve more to distract from than augment the text. Some aspects of this book seem more like a collection of facts and interpretations of physics without a real intent to teach.

Consistency rating: 2

I have discussed the variation in tone and mathematical depth in other sections, but that does drop the level of the consistency score. Within the book the terminology is self-consistent although some term choices are not used in their typical sense. The overall structure is thematically consistent even if the individual pieces may vary widely.

Modularity rating: 1

I am afraid to say the way the book reads and is structured is not really conducive to modularity. Some of the chapters are independent while others are structurally woven into a Schiller’s philosophy which requires the rest of the book to make heads or tails.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

The book does follow a non-traditional pattern of physics instruction but there is a perceivable flow to the text.

Interface rating: 5

The images, figures and equations all appear in the text undistorted. Navigation through the book is straightforward.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

No major grammatical errors. Text contains some phrasing that while grammatically correct may confuse the students and distract a bit from the overall point Schiller is addressing.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

No detectable cultural insensitivity. Examples are drawn from multiple countries mostly across Europe. Schiller does not provide many examples and practice problems with people or names unless he is referring to specific experiments or findings.

Reviewed by J Woods Halley, Professor, University of Minnesota on 7/15/14

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The book covers a lot of ground, some of which is not standard fare in an undergraduate physics curriculum. However the treatment is extremely uneven both in quality of presentation and in mathematical level. Thus in one respect the book attempts to be unusually comprehensive, but it quite often ends by being superficial and idiosycratic in its choices of subject matter.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

In most cases, Schiller has the physics right, though I detected a few places in which I found some incorrect statements. You cannot, for example, learn anything about atoms from critical opalescence, which is a long wave length phenomenon. More commonly, there are statements which are not exactly wrong but which would be very confusing to students because of the idiosycratic choice of definitions. For example, Schiller insists on a nonconventional use of the word "heat". Elsewhere he describes force as "momentum flow". One can redefine / the words to make sense of this but it is a very bad thing to do because the words "momentum flow" are better and more conventionally associated with the stress tensor in the equation describing local momentum current conservation. The discussion of entropy (Chapter 13) is also quite idiosycratic and the statement that entropy cannot be defined for systems far from equilibrium is wrong.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 2

A lot of current research topics are discussed, and most of the statements about them are correct as far as I know. However it will be utterly impossible for most students to learn anything substantive about those topics from the treatment here. It is quite evident that the author has little or no teaching experience at least before audiences characteristic of American public universities. It is absurd to expect most undergraduate students to absorb the meaning of cross products, integrals, groups and group theory and the calculus of variations in one paragraph descriptions.

Clarity rating: 2

For reasons I've articulated above, this book will be impossible for most undergraduates, including physics majors, to fully understand. I did find it stimulating to read., Schiller is clearly quite smart and the exercises are often challenging and instructive. However there is hardly any attempt to actually TEACH anything in this book and almost no thought has been given to pace, illustrative exercises to make new concepts understandable or even to ordering of the mathematics so that the 'explanations' come before the use of the mathematics. Integrals, for example, appear long before they are even defined.

Consistency rating: 1

It depends a little on how one defines the word 'consistency' but I'm afraid I would say 'terrible'. The writing veers from very elementary to postdoctoral advanced level from page to page. Thematically, there is a kind of consistency, but even that is violated toward the end of this volume, when the author chooses to throw in chapter 14 on chaos and self orgainization which has nothing to do with his theme. That chapter is in any case useless except as a list of topics and references.

Modularity rating: 2

Some of the chapters could stand alone, in a sense, but that is largely because they are not really explaining the concepts, which would require thorough knowledge of what came before, but because they are basically just listing results, peppered with dashes of half-baked and very arrogantly asserted philosopy.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

The book does follow a certain logic, as I indicated above, though it is violated in some chapters toward the end.

Interface rating: 4

The interface is ok. It was easy to find the solutions to the exercises after I did (or sometimes just attempted) them, though it would be good to be able to get back to the text more easily after going to a reference.

Grammatical Errors rating: 2

Grammar is fine, if a bit Germanic in places. Maybe this is the place to comment on the multitude of quotations in German, French, Greek, Italian and Latin. What, exactly, is the point of including them in an undergraduate physics text? It lends a certain pretension and I was sometimes intrigued or amused by them, but the vast majority of undergraduates will just be put off and annoyed by them and they rarely contribute much to the conceptual flow. In fact, many of them contain wrong physics, as in most cases Schiller is aware, and he apparently thinks it a good pedagogical technique to challenge the reader to find the errors. I can assure him that the technique would fall utterly flat, or would engender rage, in 99% of the thousands of undergraduates I have taught.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

No there is no evidence racial prejudice. But the book is often offensive because of the aggressive way in which the author pushes his views concerning interpretations of physics. For example he scornfully dismisses views of the nature of time held by leading physicists. This whole question of the nature of time is contentious, essentially metaphysical and does not need extensive discussion in an undergraduate physics text. If it is broached at all, it should be in a more evenhanded way. There are many such examples. but to mention one more, the author misinterprets what physicists who use the term 'emergence' mean and then scornfully dismisses those individuals, inaccurately attributing ideological positions to them.

Comments

Schiller appears to be very intelligent and he has some interesting and rather unconventional perspectives on physics. The biographical information indicates that he is not a professional teacher, but a business man with a strong interest in physics. That is very evident in the pedagogical failures of this book, which vastly misjudges the amount of repetition and practise that practically all students need in order to master the mathematical and physical concepts swiftly presented here. I have mentioned that I could not use this book with undergraduates, but I don't think it would work with most graduate students either. In fact I wonder if it was written to be used as a teaching tool at all. The author seems more to be using the exercise of writing it as a way of organising his own thoughts, which are often interesting and provocative, though expressed in an annoyingly arrogant way.