Re: statics first.

[palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)]

> I just checked Frank, circa 1930 from MIT, which I believe is the basis
> for Sears.  Frank begins with kinematics in one dimension,a nd then to
> kinematics in two.

Sears "Mechanics, Heat and Sound" 1950 edition (and presumably 1944
preceding it) and Sears and Zemansky "University Physics" (1950) both
start with statics. Perhaps Francis Sears was the great innovator! I
just looked at those books for the first time in a long while. I like
them better than Tipler, Serway, H&R&W, etc. Color, transparency sets
and complementary software don't make up for the lack of focus I find
in modern texts - they seem to want to go off in all directions at
once. I'm using a particularly annoying one right now by Fishbane,
Gasiorowicz & Thornton. I had no choice - it was prescribed by our
committee. It has the worst photographic illustrations in its optics
section I have ever seen. Another particularly bad text I must use in
one of my courses next semester is by Eugene Hecht, whose optics text
is pretty good. His "Physics" particular excess is that it refers to
Noether's Principle many times, always with a space-eating color
diagram signifying absolutely nothing, which can only puzzle and
confuse the poor student trying hard to get a good grasp on physical
concepts. This pandering to PC apalls me.

Incidentally, I spent an hour this afternoon looking at and reading
an old textbook I had on my shelf but had not looked at before. It is
called "Textbook of the Principles of Physics" and it is written by
one Alfred Daniel. My copy is one of a printing of 6000 pressed in
1894, the third edition of a book which first appeared ten years
earlier. I decided I wouldn't want to go back quite that far.

There is a book I really like by Alonso and Finn, "Physics", in a
printing in black and white as an Addison Wesley paperback from 1992.
I have tried unsuccessfully to find out how much this book would cost
but I've never succeeded. Anyone out there know? It should be cheap.
Has anyone used this particular edition of Alonso and Finn? (This
book doesn't treat static equilibrium until after it has treated
angular momentum (and changes thereof), quite late in the mechanics
section. It receives only 2-1/2 pages at that point, adequate to the
treatment of the topic once the necessary dynamics has been covered.

Leigh