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To: hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM, PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
Subject: Re: Comments about HS Physics Texts
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Our district went through adoption this year, so I've looked at texts
pretty closely lately.

The Serway & Faughn that Ken Kane mentioned is Holt's new text specifically
targeted for high school. It's one of the better high school texts I've
seen, but it's not a college text. The Serway & Faughn that Hugh Haskell
mentioned is published by someone else...Saunders College, maybe...and is a
non-calc college text. The high school(Holt) text would be suitable for a
somewhat challenging high school course, but I wouldn't use it for
something at the level of IB or AP.

I've taught out of Cutnell & Johnson for three years now. It's at the same
level of rigor, but I consider it inferior to Serway & Faughn (College) in
terms of quality of writing and clarity of explanations.

I think the BEST text I have seen for a rigorous high school course, bar
none, would be Eugene Hecht's Physics: Algebra/Trig. The explanations are
fantastic, the illustrations are copious and far better than those found in
most books, the physics-and-the-real-world type stuff is better written and
doesn't ignore the extra complications that come with the real world, and
the history of physics is very well woven into the text. If the choice was
mine, I'd go with this text in a heartbeat.

Glencoe will tell you that Zitzkewitz is suitable for a rigorous high
school physics course. I think it isn't, and I wouldn't use it for any
physics course, though I do know teachers who like it. Serway & Faughn's
new high school book (Holt) is much better.

Digby Willard
IB/AP Physics Teacher
Central High School
St. Paul, MN



Responding to the message of Wed, 07 Apr 1999 12:46:31 -0400
from Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>:

At Gilmour Academy (private prep school) we are considering
changing to a more rigorous physics text for 11th grade high school
physics.

We are looking most closely at the following:

1) Zitewicz & Neff: Physics, Principles & Problems
Pub: Merrill (thru Glencoe/McGraw-Hill)

2) Serway & Faughn: Physics
Pub: Holt Rinehart & Winston

We would appreciate your comments. Thanks,

Ken Kane
Gilmour Academy
Gates Mills, OH

You didn't say what your current text is, so I don't know what you are
upgrading from and to. We offer physics to 11th and 12th graders (they
are
all we have) at two introductory levels. For our less mathematically
sophisitcated students we offer a course using Zitzewitz. The latest
version (released last Sept.) is a reasonably good text for that level,
although we deal with a few topics that are omitted from this book.

For our students who have more advanced math skills, we offer a course
using Cutnall & Johnson. This text is pretty much equivalent to Serway &
Faughan.

The bottom line here is that the two texts you mention are not
interchangeable. Zitzewitz is a high school text. It is probably one of
the
best of the lot, but it is designed for high schools. Serway & Faughan is
a
college non-calculus text, and although these texts are becoming more
common in high school "honors-level" courses, that was not the intended
market. In general, I would say that a course based on Serway would be a
good preparation for the AP "B" level test, and that a course from
Zitzewitz could be the basis for the SAT-II Physics test (with some extra
material).

So before you switch to one of these two books, be sure you know which
brand of students you will be dealing with. If your students are all
motivated honors-level students, go with Serway (or one of the
equivalents). If they are more run-of-the-mill high school students,
stick
with Zitzewitz. BTW, if you adopt Zitzewitz, the publisher will toss in a
pretty extensive set of ancillary materials for each physics teacher with
the package. I don't know what kind of promotional deal the publisher of
Serway has.

Good luck. Textbook selection is always kind of a crap-shoot.

Hugh

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because
they
have to..
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