Art and Equations Designed to Teach
College Physics incorporates groundbreaking visual features that bridge physics concepts to equations and features throughout the book. Using “balloon art,” the authors break down important equations and figures into smaller amounts of information that are easier for students to grasp. The figures are simple, colorful, and approachable, inviting students to explore them rather than intimidating students so that they ignore them. Word balloon captions reinforce key ideas from the text and guide through the important physics principles that they must grasp in each chapter.
Blend of Physics and Biological Applications
College Physics was written from the ground up to guide students through the fundamentals of introductory physics, weaving physiology and biomedical topics seamlessly throughout the text and helping life science students discover why learning physics is important to their own fields of study. The authors’ aim is to instill in students a deeper appreciation of physics by showing how it determines many characteristics of living systems.
Conceptual Foundation-Building
College Physics focuses on developing a crucial conceptual foundation with carefully crafted, student-friendly learning tools that help students succeed in the course:
- Outcome-Based Learning Objectives begin each chapter, establishing both short-term (chapter sections) and long-term comprehensive (chapter) goals that allow students to judge if they’ve mastered the concepts.
- Take-Home Messages at the end of each chapter section summarize the main physics principles introduced in that section to check students’ understanding before moving on. These messages are directly tied to the outcome-based learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter.
- Got the Concept? Questions help students think through the implications or connections of a physics concept. Built into the flow of the text, these questions offer a conceptual approach to problem-solving and learning already familiar to health sciences and life sciences students.
- “Watch Out!” boxes draw students’ attention to difficult topics or common misconceptions. By tackling misunderstandings head on, students gain a deeper understanding of the physics presented in the text.
- End-of-Chapter Summaries incorporate the key concepts from each chapter into an easy-to-follow table featuring important equation(s) or figure(s).
Develops Student Problem-Solving Skills
To better align physics concepts with problem-solving, College Physics incorporates student-friendly pedagogy by presenting worked examples in a model that emphasizes reasoning and analysis:
- Set Up asks students to choose an overall approach and gather the necessary pieces of information needed to solve the problem. These might include sketches, equations related to the physics, and concepts.
- Solve shows students many of the intermediate steps in working out solutions to sample problems highlighting a crucial part of the problem-solving process that is often overlooked in other texts.
- Reflect asks students to consider the meaning, implications, and validity of the answer. Is it physically reasonable? Do the units make sense? Is there a deeper or wider understanding that can be drawn from the result?