Preface
College Physics was originally authored by Paul Peter Urone and Roger Hinrichs, and published by OpenStax, Rice University. It is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). The original work is available at openstax.org/books/college-physics-2e. This version has been adapted for use in the Universal Open Textbook Initiative.
About College Physics
College Physics provides a comprehensive and welcoming introduction to the principles, concepts, and applications typically covered in introductory physics courses. The book progresses through a learning model intended to support students at various levels, and offers faculty a great deal of flexibility in the approach and organization of their course. The text is grounded in real-world examples to help students understand the importance of physics in their lives and especially their future careers. It requires knowledge of algebra and some trigonometry, but not calculus; quantitative explanations and solutions are extremely detailed in order to build a thorough and useful understanding among students. College Physics orients its coverage around clear and widely accepted learning outcomes. It includes links to simulations and other multimedia, and each section contains ample practice opportunities in a wide array of question types.
Coverage and Scope
College Physics introduces topics conceptually and progresses through clear explanations in the context of career-oriented, practical applications. Consistency among the various definitions, foundational concepts, worked examples, and features provides a memorable pathway for student learning and helps maximize the impacts of study and practice.
The text aligns to the scope and sequence of most introductory physics courses and uses algebra as a basis for calculations. Extensive faculty feedback informed the sequence presented in the standard table of contents, but the open nature of the book—both in license and available formats—allows for significant rearrangement by faculty. Mechanics and electricity & magnetism anchor each half of the text, and optics, waves, modern physics, and other topics are arranged in units of their own for flexibility in course placement.
Improving Problem-Solving and Deepening Understanding
College Physics employs the best practices of physics teaching, informed by education research and extensive adopter feedback. In order to unify conceptual, analytical, and calculation skills within the learning process, the authors have integrated a wide array of strategies and supports throughout the text.
Worked Examples
Worked examples have four distinct parts to promote both analytical and conceptual skills. Worked examples are introduced in words, always using some application that should be of interest. This is followed by a Strategy section that emphasizes the concepts involved and how solving the problem relates to those concepts. This is followed by the mathematical Solution and Discussion.
Many worked examples contain multiple-part problems to help the students learn how to approach normal situations, in which problems tend to have multiple parts. Finally, worked examples employ the techniques of the problem-solving strategies so that students can see how those strategies succeed in practice as well as in theory.
Problem-Solving Strategies
Problem-solving strategies are first presented in a special section and subsequently appear at crucial points in the text where students can benefit most from them. Problem-solving strategies have a logical structure that is reinforced in the worked examples and supported in certain places by line drawings that illustrate various steps.
Misconception Alerts
Students come to physics with preconceptions from everyday experiences and from previous courses. Some of these preconceptions are misconceptions, and many are very common among students and the general public. Some are inadvertently picked up through misunderstandings of lectures and texts. The Misconception Alerts feature is designed to point these out and correct them explicitly.
Take-Home Investigations
Take Home Investigations provide the opportunity for students to apply or explore what they have learned with a hands-on activity.
Things Great and Small
In these special topic essays, macroscopic phenomena (such as air pressure) are explained with submicroscopic phenomena (such as atoms bouncing off walls). These essays support the modern perspective by describing aspects of modern physics before they are formally treated in later chapters. Connections are also made between apparently disparate phenomena.
Module Summaries
Module summaries are thorough and functional and present all important definitions and equations. Students are able to find the definitions of all terms and symbols as well as their physical relationships. The structure of the summary makes plain the fundamental principles of the module or collection and serves as a useful study guide.
Engaging Students
Concept Trailers
Concept Trailers are twenty-four videos designed to engage and introduce students to key chapter concepts. These professionally produced videos are like a movie trailer and are approximately 90 seconds in length. These can be used independently by students or in lecture. Concept Trailers are available on YouTube.
Simulations
Where applicable, students are directed to the interactive PhET physics simulations developed by the University of Colorado Boulder. There they can further explore the physics concepts they have learned about in the module.
Flexibility and Progressions in Practice and Assessment
College Physics provides a rich array of question types that promote faculty choice and ample opportunity for student practice and advancement.
- Conceptual Questions challenge students' ability to explain what they have learned conceptually, independent of the mathematical details.
- Problems & Exercises challenge students to apply both concepts and skills to solve mathematical physics problems.
- Integrated Concept Problems ask students to apply what they have learned about two or more concepts to arrive at a solution to a problem.
- Create Your Own Problems require students to construct the details of a problem, justify their starting assumptions, show specific steps in the problem's solution, and discuss the meaning of the result. These types of problems relate well to both conceptual and analytical aspects of physics, emphasizing that physics must describe nature. Often they involve an integration of topics from more than one chapter. Unlike other problems, solutions are not provided since there is no single correct answer. Instructors should feel free to direct students regarding the level and scope of their considerations. Whether the problem is solved and described correctly will depend on initial assumptions.
- Unreasonable Results Problems drive students to both solve a problem and analyze the answer's likelihood and realism. These problems contain a premise that produces an unreasonable answer and are designed to further emphasize that properly applied physics must describe nature accurately and is not simply the process of solving equations.
- Critical Thinking Questions are new additions to the text. These challenging, multi-part problems typically integrate conceptual, quantitative, and graphical response elements in order to deeply investigate student understanding. Most chapters provide one Critical Thinking Question, and we have reserved additional questions and solutions only for instructor use.
Answers to Questions in the Book
Answers to Problems & Exercises are provided in the Instructor Answer Guide. Select answers to Problems & Exercises are provided in the Student Solution Guide. Answers to Conceptual Questions are not provided as the scope and response type can differ based on faculty requirements.
Additional Resources
Instructor resources for this book include an instructor's solutions manual, PowerPoint lecture slides, a test bank, and Concept Trailer instructor notes. These are available through the OpenStax instructor resources page for this book. Instructors can also find and share community-created teaching materials at oercommons.org/hubs/OpenStax.
About the Authors
Senior Contributing Authors
Paul Peter Urone, Professor Emeritus at California State University, Sacramento
Roger Hinrichs, State University of New York, Oswego (retired)
Contributing Authors
Kim Dirks, University of Auckland
Kenneth Podolak, State University of New York, Plattsburgh
Manjula Sharma, University of Sydney
Henry Smith, River Parishes Community College
Reviewers
Matthew Adams, Crafton Hills College, San Bernardino Community College District
Erik Christensen, South Florida Community College
Douglas Ingram, Texas Christian University
Eric Kincanon, Gonzaga University
Lee H. LaRue, Paris Junior College
Chuck Pearson, Virginia Intermont College
Marc Sher, College of William and Mary
Ulrich Zurcher, Cleveland State University