Physics: Principles and Applications, 7th edition

Elegant, engaging, exacting, and concise, Giancoli’s Physics: Principles with Applications, Seventh Edition, helps students view the world through eyes that know physics.

Giancoli’s text is a trusted classic, known for its elegant writing, clear presentation, and quality of content. Using concrete observations and experiences students can relate to, the text features an approach that reflects how science is actually practiced: it starts with the specifics, then moves to the great generalizations and the more formal aspects of a topic to show students why we believe what we believe.

Written with the goal of giving students a thorough understanding of the basic concepts of physics in all its aspects, the text uses interesting applications to biology, medicine, architecture, and digital technology to show students how useful physics is in their own everyday lives and in their future professions.

Engaging applications and elegant writing show the relevance of physics.

• Concrete applications, observations, and experiences that students can relate to show students how useful physics is in their everyday lives and future professions in such areas as biology, medicine, and architecture.
• Physics Applied margin notes highlight the varied and frequent applications in the text.The writing style is concise and elegant, using an economy of words to describe physics accurately and precisely.

Proven pedagogy guides students through common misconceptions to teach important problem solving skills.

• NEW! Chapter-Opening Questions, at the start of each chapter, help identify preconceived notions that students might have before they read the chapter.
• NEW! MisConceptual Questions are multiple-choice questions, at the end of each chapter, that address common student misconceptions.
• NEW! Search and Learn Problems at the end of each chapter encourage students to reread part of the text.
• Worked Examples include consistent problem solving strategies with Approach, Solution, and Note steps.
• Problem Solving Strategies throughout the book outline step-by-step approaches to get students thinking about and involved in the problem at hand.
• Conceptual Examples feature brief Socratic questions intended to stimulate students to respond before they read the Response given.
• Estimate Examples develop skills for making order-of-magnitude estimates.
• Problem Solving margin notes offer problem solving hints where needed most.

Improved and Updated Pedagogy

• MisConceptual (Multiple-choice) Questions now appear at the end of each chapter. Answer options for these questions are intended to include common student misconceptions, providing both a learning and a testing experience.
• Search and Learn Problems are placed at the very end of each Chapter, after the other Problems. While some problems are relatively difficult, others are fairly easy. They are intended to compel the student to go back and reread some part or parts of the text, and in this search for an answer they will hopefully learn more.
• Chapter-Opening Questions (COQs) start each chapter as a sort of “stimulant.” Each is multiple-choice, with responses including common misconceptions—to get preconceived notions out on the table right at the start. Where relevant material is covered in the text, students find an Exercise asking them to return to the COQ and reconsider it.
• Modified examples include more math steps that are spelled out, and many new Examples have been added. About 10% of all Examples are Estimate Examples.
• Improved page layout has been achieved for every page of the book. Important derivations and Examples are on facing pages.

Updated Content and Applications

• Language has been streamlined throughout and edited for greater clarity. Specifically, essentials appear first; elaborations follow.
• Digital coverage has been significantly updated throughout. This major change includes crucial new applications in today’s world, where students are surrounded by digital electronics. In an effort to help students understand “How it works,” the author explains:
  • The basis of digital in bits and bytes, how analog gets transformed into digital, sampling rate, bit depth, quantization error, compression, and noise
  • How digital TV works, including how each pixel is addressed for each frame, data stream, refresh rate
  • Semiconductor computer memory, DRAM, and Flash
  • Digital cameras and sensors—revised and expanded
  • New semiconductor physics, some of which is used in digital devices, including LEDs and OLEDs—how they work and what their uses are, plus more on transistors (MOSFETs), chips, and technology generation, as in 22-nm technology
• New topics, new applications, and principal revisions include:
  • You can measure the Earth’s radius
  • Improved graphical analysis of linear motion
  • The Moon’s orbit around the Earth: its phases and periods, with a diagram
  • Planets (how they were first seen); heliocentric and geocentric models
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