Re: High School Textbooks

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

Tony Wayne wrote:
> We are in the process of adopting new high school physics textbooks. So far,
> for high school level, I have only 2 books; one by HOLT and one by Merrill.
> Does anyone else know of any other publishers and authors of a high school
> textbook?

The query
  http://www.google.com/search?q=physics+site%3Atextbookleague.org
returns 60 hits.  I imagine a diligent adoption committee would
want to have a look.

In particular
  http://www.textbookleague.org/ttlindex.htm#phys-hsb
lists a half-dozen or so high-school physics books.

Particularly relevant reviews include
  http://www.textbookleague.org/32pssc1.htm
  http://www.textbookleague.org/82hewt.htm
  http://www.textbookleague.org/72physc.htm

Also:  When appraising textbooks, take a good look at the end-of-chapter
exercises.  I was recently flipping through a college-level physics text
and noticed some unbelievably vile exercises:  they were obviously
fishing for a particular answer, which could by obtained by mindless
rote application of a formula in the chapter.  Meanwhile, anyone who
had a "feel" for the physics would be penalized, since the formula
was not applicable to the given situation, and the real physical
answer differed wildly from the "required" answer.  Things like
this are a huuuuge demotivator for the students, especially the
good students.

============

It's appalling how little systematic experimental data there is on
how well one textbook works relative to another.  It wouldn't take
a rocket scientist to figure out how to conduct some systematic
experiments.  And 0.01% of the annual textbook budget would easily
cover the cost of the experiments.....