Recommended Textbooks for Advanced Level Physics Part 3 : United Kingdom Text - Advanced Level Physics by Nelkon & Parker

Textbook Reviewed :  Advanced Level Physics (by Nelkon & Parker)


This was the classic text used by most Singapore schools at the time that when I was still a student.  The current edition is much better than the 6th Edition, which I felt the paper was so thin that I was so afraid to tear it.  It is still one of the key British texts that I constantly refer to, maybe I was familiar with the lay out.

What I Particularly Like About The Text:

This is a text particularly suited for the A-level syllabus.  It contains much information especially on experiments that students particularly need for the A-level examination.

I always recommend this as a reading text for my students, as I find it helps the students to hone the way they write  (in a scientific manner).  Language and arguments are done in a formal manner and it does improve the quality the students write.  Since the A-levels are set by UK examiners, it is best to understand what the examiners are saying.  This helps in understanding of the questions set in the A-levels examinations as well.
  
This is also a good text as it covers everything and also beyond the A-level syllabus, which is good as A-levels do expect the student to be informed beyond the syllabus and provides good grounding.  (Btw, the O-level text - "Principle of Physics" is particularly good...helped me score my distinction in Physics when I did my O-level....was utterly grateful for it.)


What I feel needs to be improved:

The same with all other British texts, I hope to see a version of text with :

• more colour
• highlighting of the more important points in boxes esp. the essential definitions and explanations.
• Layout can be more friendly and aesthetically done
• More pictures (hopefully colourful ones)
• Have scaffolding questions before dumping the students with the examination style questions which are nevertheless important.

Recommended Textbooks for Advanced Level Physics Part 2 : United Kingdom Text - Advanced Physics by Tom Duncan

Textbook Reviewed:  Advanced Physics by Tom Duncan

This is another textbook which I commonly refer to when I prepare for lectures and tutorials. 

What I particularly like about the Textbook:

Explanations are very detailed and clear.  Definitions are again very precise.  I also particularly like the detailed descriptions and well-labelled diagrams of the experiments and all essential experiments are given.  The drawings were often traditional clipart drawings which you could easily duplicate for exams using your pencils, unlike the diagrams nowadays in US texts which tend to replace them by real objects and students may not know the skill to draw the schematic diagrams which they need to produce in examinations.

Areas that can be Improved for the textbook:

  I was first exposed to this text when I was an A-level student - this was the other recommended text besides Nelkon and Parker.  However, I found it a little difficult to follow as the concepts and ideas were not introduced in the sequence taught by my lecturers or tutors, this was further complicated by the fact that the tutors did not point out specifically where I could refer to for each chapter of the text.  To give you an example, for the study of thermal physics I had to look at one chapter for the various bonds of the materials to see how they affected specific heat capacity and another chapter for example on gas laws.  Examples in the texts were also too few and so I found it difficult to scaffold  my learning and found it difficult to apply what I have learnt to the questions given for tutorials.  So eventually, I still stuck on to my Nelkon and Parker.  As a teacher, I got around this problem, as I was familiar with the instructional objectives of each topic, so I usually search for the information I need through the glossary, e.g. suppose I was looking for information on Conservation of Energy, I would then go to the glossary and read through all the relevant pages on Conservation of Energy.

 As usual, end of chapter problems were usually UK A-level examination questions,  therefore they pose difficulty to a student new to the topic as there was too great a jump from the concepts to the application of concepts to exam-style question.  It would have been better to have some simpler questions that were first relevant and arranged according to the concepts introduced and then the slightly more difficult ones that were more at the examination level, and then finally the examination style questions.

[Note:  Diagram is taken of http://www.amazon.co.uk/.  In the case that anyone wishes for me to remove it I can easily do so.]

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Recommended Textbooks for Advanced Level Physics Part 1 : United Kingdom Text - Physics by Robert Hutchings

Somehow, after 3 months into the Pre-university Physics course, many students would find themselves struggling in the course and approach the tutors for a recommended text.  We usually make a list of a few texts that we use but till date for the Singapore curriculum, we do not have a single text that can satisfy the needs of the Singapore A-level Physics.  As teachers, we ourselves refer to a few texts.  My suggestion is therefore as such.  Pick a textbook that you find readible....you may want to start off borrowing from the library and use it for a few chapters, see if you find it easy to read and understand. before buying it  Supplement with other textbooks from the library when needed.

In this series I will look at a few textbooks that I use in my teaching and preparation of lecture notes and my comments on them.

Basically, there are two types of textbooks that I use - the British Textbooks for A-levels and the US Textbooks. 

The key strength of the British Textbooks are:

• They are very targeted towards the A-levels.  Afterall, the Singapore A-level Physics students are sitting for the Cambridge paper.
• The language is written in a very British style, which is rather formal and precise.  Reading them helps to hone the skills in writing scientifically in a formal manner.
• The definitions are very precise, much more in my opinion to the US texts.  Therefore, they are the key source when I need to look for definitions to put in my lectures.
• There is great emphasis on the experiments that verifies the laws and concepts.  So detailed descriptions with setups are given.  This is great for design experiment questions when sitting for the examinations.
• Contains end of chapter questions that are from the UK examination board.

The key thing that puts me off is the organisation.  Somehow, it may not be very readible, lines after lines after lines of words which you have to go back many times to understand.  Many books are also monochrome with little diagrams and diagrams that are in black-and-white do not appeal to me.  Questions are usually just examination style questions, they do not scaffold learning and are usually not arranged in a manner which follows the sequence the concepts were introduced.

Book 1: Physics (Bath Advanced Science) by Robert Hutchings

This is the textbook that many Physics tutors would refer to for definitions especially when there are disputes amongst ourselves on how much is needed in the definition.  It can a simple argument as to whether "gravitational field strength can be defined as force on a unit charge", which by the way is not accepted by many tutors - it should be "force per unit charge" which conveys a different meaning.

It is mainly the key text as Hutching has been one of the Chief Examiners for the Cambridge A-level Physics paper that Singapore students have been taking for many years.

The book was first published when I was a student and I could not fully appreciate the text.  After reading the topic I often found it lacking in sufficient depth nor scaffolding enough for me to attempt the tutorial questions given to me.   

However, one particular advantage that this text had over others were that there was almost a Data Analysis (DA) question at the end of every topic.  At that time the DA question was relatively new, and very and almost no books carried them and yet we were to be assessed.   For those of you not familiar with what DA questions are, they are questions that gives a set of real life information of and allows you to make analysis on the relationships.  The question itself is very long with alot of information given as figures, charts graphs and the students are given a set of questions which they are expected to decipher and pick out only the relevant data to solve the question at hand.  Questions are very authetic e.g.  apply Conservation of Linear Momentum to the various ball games like cricket, tennis, golf etc.

As a teacher, this is still the key source of reference which I go to for definitions and DA questions.  I have learnt to appreciate some of the intermediate examples set by Hutchings e.g. the long question (which I think contains part (a) to (j)) on the use of indicator diagrams in gas law...doing that question alone helps student really familiarise with the use of First Law of Thermodynamics and the different thermal processes like isothermal, isobaric and isochoric processes.

Difference Between Electric Field and Electric Field Strength

To put it simply, the electric field is a region of space in which when a charged object is placed in the field.  It will experience a force acting on it.

However, in Physics, we would prefer a more specific way to define a quantity, and as with gravitational field, we would like to have a definition that allows us to quantify a physics physical quantity.  Hence, we assign an number (and also a direction) to every point in the field.  In this way, we can find out about the force acting on the charge placed at the point in the field if we were to know the charge and the field strength.

The electric field strength is a property of the field and not charge placed there.  Hence, we define the electric field strength at a point in an electric field as the force acting per unit charge on a small positive test charge when placed at that point in the field

Electric field strength at a point in field, E =  F/q

where F is the force acting on the charge q placed at that point in the electric field.

This equation not only defines for us the magnitude of the field strength at a point, but also the direction of the field.  Although the definition specifies a positive test charge, in practical test of the field, we can always use a negative test charge, the q will then be negative.  What it simply means is the field would be in opposite in direction to the force experienced by the negative test charge.

Students also often ask why there is a need to have a small test charge.  This is to ensure the that the test charge itself does not distort the original field significantly. 

Bargains for Members at AAPT

The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) is having a great booksale for their members. Just choose 5 books for the price of USD 30 (excluding statement), maybe that is sufficient motivation to entice me to renew my membership....I stopped renewing when my school subscribed to "The Physics Teacher".

If you are interested, you may go to http://www.aapt.org for more details

Why is there a need for the concept of Gravitational Field?

  A few students have been coming to ask me this,"Why is there a need for the concept of gravitational field? What is its significance?" They have been quite happy to accept Newton's Law of Gravitation and could not see a need for the concept of field.  So I will try my best to discuss this to my best understanding.
  When the concept of gravitational force was discovered, there was a great disbelief by many scientists of that age and one of the key question faced by the scientists then was "How could 2 objects without touching each other have an effect (force of attraction) on each other?"
  I always jokingly tell my students that this is because they have never seen Chinese kungfu and experience qi gong, or watched those martial arts Chinese serials....but back to the point.....
  To overcome this obstacle for understanding, the concept of field was then created.  Any object which possessed mass (let us call it a source mass) would be able to exert a field around itself (its like having invisible arms of influence).  Under normal circumstances, we would not be able to see the field.  However we know that a field is there when we place another (test mass) in this field as we can see that this test mass will experience a force.
  For physics, we like to quantify properties.  So we would like to quantify this field by the source mass.  Now, we would expect that the larger the value of source mass, its gravitational field should be larger.  (compare that of Earth and Sun) The further we are from the source mass, the less influence the source mass should have on the test mass. The gravitational field can only be "seen" by the test mass, but yet is a property of the source mass, hence, we measure that force that is on the test mass by the field, but divide that force by the test mass so that we have a quantity that becomes independent of the test mass
 
  The gravitational field strength at a point in the field, g = (Force on a test mass placed at the point)/(test mass)

If the source of the field is a point mass M, then we can further write g = GM/r^2
, where M is the mass of the source mass, and r is the distance from the source mass.  This is consistent with our argument above.

Hence, a gravitational field is just a region of space in which a mass when placed in it will experience a force and the force experience by the mass m placed is equal to the product of the field strength at that point and the mass of the test mass placed there.

 

About Me

I am a Physics Teacher teaching in a Junior College in Singapore. Physics was not my first choice of teaching subject, rather I was coerced into it. But I had a privilege of meeting some very inspiring Professors when I was in NTU/NIE and found it very fascinating and intriguing, in the end when I was asked to make a choice between offering Mathematics or Physics in honours, I chose Physics and have not ever regretted my choice. Eventually graduated with a first class honours in Physics and was the Lee Kuan Yew Book Prize Gold winner for my graduating batch.

I am now into my 12 years of teaching Physics, and the subjects still fascinates me. As I teach, I learn, especially when my students ask me questions and seek to answer them in a way that can allow them to understand the answers conceptually. With this blog, I hope to pen down my experiences in Physics which can include, questions that are asked by my students, books that I have read, interesting websites that I have visited and anything to do with Physics as well as my teaching of Physics.

Further points about me:

Schools that I have taught in :

• Hwa Chong Junior College (1998 - 2002)
• Meridian Junior College (2002 - 2006)
• NUS High School of Mathematics and Science (2006 - 2007)
• Hwa Chong Institution (College Section) (2008 - Present)

My Interests :

• Physics and the teaching of Physics
• Educational Technology (Any technology that can enhance learning)
• Cooking (Find my food blog at http://foodexpt.blogspot.com)
• Research (Tentatively looking at using cooperative learning in the teaching of H2 Physics at Junior College Level)