I'm using this book for my first college physics course. I find the text very dry and boring, and the problems at the end of each chapter are confusing and not well explained. For example, I'm doing my homework and one of the problems is "speculate on how gaseous diffusion works." Just that, does not explain what gaseous diffusion is. As with many of the problems in this book, the first thing that comes into my mind is "what the hell are you talking about??" Another question asks me to compare the length of something to "the diameter of a molecule." Huh? What molecule? Are all molecules the same diameter? And how the heck am I supposed to know what that diameter is? Gah. I do not recommend this book unless you like being confused.

Also, the discussion questions at the end of each chapter are very nice, but the answers are not provided anywhere. So how are you supposed to know if you answered them correctly? And another thing I really hate about this book, it will say "and why do you think this happens?" and then not tell you why. About 90% of the time my answer is "I have no clue why that happened." :/ This book makes me hate physics.

I bought this book because I thought is was "College Physics" by Sears. Well, it isn't. This looks, feels and reads like a high school textbook - if you're looking for a serious, academic-level introduction to physics, then don't buy this. Its full of pictures and "real life" examples that are intended to spare the student any effort and save him/her from abstract thought. Much is lost because of this, and we're left with a bunch of pictures and stories about the authors' flying hobby.

Don't buy this, please, I regret it everytime I see it sitting uselessly next to the open copy of the Sears book I loaned from the library.

Excellent!! I'm studying in Form 7 and going to take my Advanced Level Examinations this year. No other reference book avaliable in Hong Kong better than University Physics. The content are very well organized and the examples are extremely useful. I'm sure that you won't be disappointed after you buy this book.

Found this book to be rather lacking in clear elucidation of fundamental physical topics, but the pictures were good

I used this book to prepare for IIT-JEE in India. It is an excellent book! Two-enthusiastic thumbs up!

According to the author, this book is designed for high school or college students familiar with physics who plan to major in science. (This includes me.) That said, this book crams so much into 122 pages that I got whiplash from reading some of the derivations. Some of them are just impossible to follow. I don't know how anyone coming from a first year physics course can absorb thermodynamics in one chapter, which is what this book tries to accomplish.. I still have no concept of the mathematical meaning of entropy. However, this book covers so many interesting topics that it's worth buying. These include superconductors, superfluidity, blackbody radiation, negative temperatures (i.e., beyond absolute zero), plasmas, fusion, and everything else you would expect. (Keep in mind that it is fairly dated, though, it's a reprint of a 1964 edition.)

The book was full of typos, just do a few problems and check the answers in the back if you don't believe me. I have never seen a seventh edition with so many mistakes. At times it was readable but more often it was not. I thought the last few chapters were very good, however. The flow of material seemed quite logical, but I thought some important things were not stressed enough. I just cannot justify giving this book less than two stars, or more than three.

Unless you're a physicist who has never seen thermodynamics before, don't use this book! The author's statement of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is flawed at best. They drop Gibb's Theorem into proofs without any discussion of the theorem itself. The authors call the concepts of 'fugacity' and 'activity' "topics beyond the scope of this book", and they spend A PAGE deriving mole fractions (didn't we all figure out this concept in high school). In conclusion, the 6th edition was far superior to the 7th edition. Perhaps if Zemansky was still alive...

The book is a decent first course on thermodynamics. My main issue with it was that most of the 'problems' were trivial exercises in algebra, although a few were worthwhile. Parts of the book were dull, but some sections were quite interesting. I found there to be fewer errors than some of the other reviews might lead you to believe.