This complete foreword is my message to faculty as to what Physics One tries to do, and how it is different from other physics books, other of course than its price…only $19.99. Sample text:
Preface I: For Faculty and For People Doing independent Study
Physics One, The Alpha Edition is based on the decades I spent teaching this course as a college professor. This book represents a radical change in how we teach physics. Why is this book different from many other introductory mechanics books? Most important, students can probably afford to buy it. In some states, this book costs less than the sales tax on some of its competitors. That’s possible because this volume is independently published, using my figures and editing skills. My illustrations are the sort of line drawings I would put on the blackboard during lecture.
Physics One presents calculus-based, college-level physics. By calculus-based, I mean that students must consistently use calculus in homework. They should also need calculus in examinations, but that is under your control, not mine. By college-level, I mean that for the most part the course is based on symbolic, not numerical, reasoning.
Why is this The Alpha Edition? I spent considerable time proofreading and fact checking. However, this volume costs so little because it is not being used to support a vast horde of artists, photographers, editors, proofreaders, indexers, marketeers, salesmen, Vice Presidents, expense accounts, corner offices[1], consultants, and other doubtless nice people. Correspondingly, despite my best efforts, there are doubtless remaining typographic errors, infelicities of phrase, and other mistakes I failed to remove. I would much appreciate your calling these to my attention, at phillies@4liberty.net, following which at some future date I shall be replacing Physics One, The Alpha Edition with Physics One, The Beta Edition.
You will hear colleagues say that many freshmen are not yet reasoning on the symbolic level, the level where they would solve problems using algebra and calculus rather than plugging numbers into their pocket calculators. To that I say students came to the university to learn new things. For those students, symbolic reasoning is one of those things that they need to learn, and that you and your colleagues need to teach them. To help students learn symbolic reasoning, the book presents a lot of algebraic calculations, in which I take very small steps from line to line, so students can follow the steps for themselves. I try to emphasize why steps are being taken. In addition, I provide almost no numerical problems, only algebraic and calculus-based problems. For each Chapter in Part I, I present a set of self-test questions for students, with solutions provided at roughly the level of detail I would have presented the solutions myself in a conference class. These solutions present new material not in the rest of the chapter.
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[1] Okay, I confess, my home office does have picture windows on two sides, and a second-floor view of my gardens.