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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