Essential University Physics: Volume 2 (3rd 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 textbookand 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 afterward 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.
● Addressing 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 the Third Edition

The overall theme for this third-edition revision is to present a more unified view of physics, emphasizing “big ideas” and the connections among different topics covered throughout the book. We’ve also updated material and features based on feedback from instructors, students, and reviewers. A modest growth, averaging about one page per chapter, allows for expanded coverage of topics where additional elaboration seemed warranted.

Several chapters have had major rewrites of key physics topics. We’ve also made a number of additions and modifications aimed at improving students’ understanding, increasing relevancy, and offering expanded problem-solving opportunities.
● Chapter opening pages have been redesigned to include explicit connections, both textual and graphic, with preceding and subsequent chapters.
● The presentation of energy and work in Chapters 6 and 7 has been extensively rewritten with a clearer invocation of systems concepts. Internal energy is introduced much earlier in the book, and potential energy is carefully presented as a property not of objects but of systems. Two new sections in Chapter 7 emphasize the universality of energy conservation, including the role of internal energy in systems subject to dissipative forces. Forward references tie this material to the chapters on thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and relativity. The updated treatment of energy also allows the text to make a closer connection between the conservation laws for energy and momentum.

The presentation of magnetic flux and Faraday’s law in Chapter 27 has been recast so as to distinguish motional emf from emfs induced by changing magnetic fields—including Einstein’s observation about induction, which is presented as a forward-looking connection to Chapter 33.
● There is more emphasis on calculus in earlier chapters, allowing instructors who wish to do so to use calculus approaches to topics that are usually introduced algebraically. We’ve also added more calculus-based problems. However, we continue to emphasize the standard approach in the main text for those who teach the course with a calculus corequisite or otherwise want to go slowly with more challenging math.
● A host of new applications connects the physics concepts that students are learning with contemporary technological and biomedical innovations, as well as recent scientific discoveries. A sample of new applications includes Inertial Guidance Systems, Vehicle Stability Control, Climate Modeling, Electrophoresis, MEMS (Microelectromechanical Systems), The Taser, Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Geomagnetic Storms, PET Scans, Noise-Cancelling Headphones, Femtosecond Chemistry, Windows on the Universe, and many more.
● Additional worked examples have been added in areas where students show the need for more practice in problem solving. Many of these are not just artificial textbook problems but are based on contemporary science and technology, such as the Mars Curiosity rover landing, the Fukushima accident, and the Chelyabinsk meteor. Following user requests, we’ve added an example of a collision in the center-of-mass reference frame.
● New GOT IT? boxes, now in nearly every section of every chapter, provide quick checks on students’ conceptual understanding. Many of the GOT IT? questions have been formatted as Clicker questions, available on the Instructor’s Resource DVD and in the Instructor’s Resource Area in Mastering.
● End-of chapter problem sets have been extensively revised:
● Each EOC problem set has at least 10 percent new or substantially revised problems.

● More “For Thought and Discussion Questions” have been added.
● Nearly every chapter has more intermediate-level problems.
● More calculus-based problems have been added.
● Every chapter now has at least one data problem, designed to help students develop strong quantitative reasoning skills. These problems present a data table and require students to determine appropriate functions of the data to plot in order to achieve a linear relationship and from that to find values of physical quantities involved in the experiment from which the data were taken.
● New tags have been added to label appropriate problems. These include CH (challenge), ENV (environmental), and DATA, and they join the previous BIO and COMP (computer) problem tags.
● QR codes in margins allow students to use smartphones or other devices for immediate access to video tutor demonstrations that illustrate selected concepts while challenging students to interact with the video by predicting outcomes of simple experiments.
● References to PhET simulations appear in the margins where appropriate.
● As with earlier revisions, we’ve incorporated new research results, new applications of physics principles, and findings from physics education research.