[pdf] Vibrations and Waves (The M.I.T. Introductory Physics Series) A.P. French

{excuse me if my review does not flow. I’m not very good at connecting paragraphs. I hope what i’m about to say here will be helpful to at least some of you.}

I realize by giving this “classic” a 3 star I’m literally asking to be bashed on. But i think it’s only fair to rate a book the way one perceives it.

Before I bought the book, I read the reviews here, there were 10 five star reviews and 1 one star review. The latter one (1 star review) was voted not helpful by several users, and I thought it was just some guy trolling. But now that I’ve bought the book, and actually read it, I see where the guy was coming from. I think he was way too harsh to give it a 1 star rating though.

Like the title of this review says, there is no examples in this book, nope none. I dunno how other folks learn Physics but I do by looking at few examples, getting an idea of what’s going on, and then trying out some problems on my own.

Fortunately, this book does have problems at the end of each chapters…and yes there is an answer key at the end of the book.

Also fortunately, there is the internet. Out of frustration, i started googing for university courses that were using this book and i hoped the professor was nice enough to post some examples, practice problem w/ solutions. Luckily there are a few out there.

There is MIT OpenCourseWare. You can see solution’s to some of the problems that were assigned as a homework in MIT’s Vibration and Waves class. Furthermore, they also have documented exams with solutions. University of Michigan also used this book in Physics 340 and they have exams and homework w/ solutions documented online.

My professor was selectively teaching from this book, at one point he was in chapter 7 at another he was in chapter 4 and back and forth. So it was a bit of a hassle to look over these webpages and study only those things that I needed.

Apart from the fact that this book has no examples, it is everything the 5 star reviewers have said.

P.S get yourself Vibrations and Waves (M.I.T. Introductory Physics Series)it is 1/2 the price of Vibrations and Waves (Mit Introductory Physics Series)

P.P.S. Vibrations and Waves (Manchester Physics Series)is a 2009 book published by Wiley. It actually has worked out examples. Also, at the end of the book, it provides worked out solutions (not answer key but solutions) to end of chapter problems. And it covers more or less same topics as this book, preview the table of content for both book and compare for yourself.