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Re: Today's jaw dropper



We just started using the current incarnation of Sears & Zemansky. A few
comments.

It replaces Wolfson&Pasachoff, which replaced Serway, for our calculus based
course. I find it better than Serway, but it isn't hugely different. I
suspect that what I like better are the vestiges that it retains from the
classic.

BTW It is now Young & Freedman and I suspect this latest edition is mostly
the doings of Freedman; but I don't know that for a fact.

One change which I have advocated forever, is the use of arrows to indicate
vectors, rather than just merely using a bold-face font. This has been a
small pet-peeve of mine over the years. Since student pencil and pens don't
have a bold face capability, they tend to omit using arrows to indicate
vector quantities (despite seeing me do this repeatedly in lecture, errr
excuse me, the hour long interactive facilitation of learning time). And I
think this tendency is reinforced by books that only use bold-face, and
lowers the direct "in-your-face" attitude that vectors are different from
scalars; and I want as much reinforcement of this fact as is possible! This
actually convinced me to vote for this book in our "choose the book
committee".

Also, we rather routinely change books every two to three years. Our
reasoning, besides boredom, is that many of the instructors at our
institution assign homework that is graded and is part of the student grade;
and changing books tends to lessen the problem of students just copying HW
from the "files". The fact that most of the books are basically the same,
means that changing books isn't much of a hardship on instructors.

I've looked at Young before, but I was not thrilled; it didn't
seem to me that there was a significant improvement.

I'm going to guess, Leigh, that you would like the new edition a bit better
than the older Young edition (of S & Z).

Also, since it is a reincarnation of S&Z, if you liked the original S&Z than
perhaps this has enough of the old vestiges (even without vitual work) to
make a preference for you (you = Leigh).

There are
some things that are definite regressive changes (e.g. the loss of
the principle of virtual work about which I've complained before).
I haven't got a current edition; I've likely given it away to some
student*. . . . I think Young is mainstream.

Yes, its pretty mainstream.

Joel Rauber
rauberj@mg.sdstate.edu