Essential University Physics: Volume 1 (2nd Edition)

Book Preface

Introductory physics texts have grown ever larger, more massive, more encyclopedic,more colorful, and more expensive. Essential University Physics bucks that trend—without compromising coverage, pedagogy, or quality. The text benefits from the author’s three decades of teaching introductory physics, seeing firsthand the difficulties and misconceptions that students face as well as the “Got It!” moments when big ideas become clear. It also builds on the author’s honing multiple editions of a previous calculus-based textbook and on feedback from hundreds of instructors and students.

Goals of This Book

Physics is the fundamental science, at once fascinating, challenging, and subtle—and yet simple in a way that reflects the few basic principles that govern the physical universe. My goal is to bring this sense of physics alive for students in a range of academic disciplines who need a solid calculus-based physics course—whether they’re engineers, physics majors, premeds, biologists, chemists, geologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, or other majors. My own courses are populated by just such a variety of students, and among my greatest joys as a teacher is having students who took a course only because it was required say afterwards that they really enjoyed their exposure to the ideas of physics. More specifically, my goals include:

● Helping students build the analytical and quantitative skills and confidence needed to apply physics in problem solving for science and engineering.
● Adressing key misconceptions and helping students build a stronger conceptual understanding.
● Helping students see the relevance and excitement of the physics they’re studying with contemporary applications in science, technology, and everyday life.
● Helping students develop an appreciation of the physical universe at its most fundamental level.
● Engaging students with an informal, conversational writing style that balances precision with approachability.

New to This Edition

We’ve updated this second edition based on user feedback to expand coverage of a few key topics and abbreviate coverage of some that are less widely taught. We’ve also added new and revised features to improve conceptual understanding and spotlight relevancy, and have completely overhauled end-of-chapter problem sets. Specific changes include:

● Expanded coverage of impulse (Ch. 9), the addition of the wave equation (Ch.14), and a new statistical treatment of entropy (Ch. 19).
● Reduced coverage of toroids (Ch. 26) and phasors (Ch. 28).
● New Conceptual Examples that contain a Making the Connection follow-up question applying the concept from the example to a quantitative problem based on a real-world situation.
● New Applications to emphasize how physics concepts apply to real-world situations, including biomedical and engineering fields.
● To Learn/To Know chapter previews are now called New Concepts, New Skills/Connecting Your Knowledge, and have been revised to better emphasize the key concepts in each chapter and to show how they connect with concepts in previous chapters.

● End-of-chapter (EOC) problem sets now include new biomedical-related problems that investigate physics concepts in biology, medicine, and biomedical technologies, and new computational problems that require a computer or graphing calculator.
● Every end-of-chapter problem set now includes new Passage Problems similar to the types of questions asked on the MCAT Exam. Each set includes 4 multiplechoice questions based on a passage of text, often with an accompanying figure or graph, and involves biomedical and other real-world scenarios.
● EOC problem sets have been thoroughly revised to include new calculus-based problems, new context-rich problems, and more medium-difficulty problems.
● All quantitative results—both in-text examples and EOC problems—have been checked independently for accuracy by two physicists.
● Finally, we’ve incorporated new research results and new applications of physics principles wherever they’re relevant.