Frictions Books

I cannot warn you strongly enough against buying this book. Were it possible, I would rate this at 0 stars. Supposedly it is written by an experienced professor and lecturer. If this is in fact true, I hope he no longer is employed by any reputable university. As a sophomore who has been away from school for some time, I bought this sight unseen from Amazon.com, intending to use it as a refresher prior to the end of my military service and before I re-entered college. I have found it riddled with factual errors, lacking in its depth and misguided in its focus.

The book attempts to introduce the reader to chemistry, then produces a table with the first 11 elements and their valences, leaving the rest unknown. It does the same for molecular physics, then states that an electron is 2000 times more massive than a proton. It touches on astronomy, then claims the Grand Canyon was created by a meteorite impact. It tries to discuss Einstein's concept of space-time, but does absolutely nothing for relating the actual formulae or demonstrating the concept in any way to help the reader understand it. The book does however waste the paper to discuss what would happen if the sun's mass was turned into a black hole, and how even though Sol's mass is unchanged, it would mysteriously begin sucking in nearby stars. It talks about the speed of light and refraction through a clear substance, then mentions two theories, one which claims light travels slower through denser materials, one which claims light moves faster- and never states which is correct.

Patrick from Sydney apparently meant to review another book, because this is certainly not a 500 page textbook. The 240 pages of material are in a comfortably large font, with little enough real information that each chapter can be read without difficulty in about the same time it takes to read a magazine article. There is no math beyond the most basic of algebra, with a single page devoted to the definition of sine, cosine and tangent so that Snell's law of refraction can even be brought up. The primary focus of this book seems to be a cursorary history of physics, but I would prefer reading a decent encyclopedia's individual entries than the thin overview presented in "Teach Yourself Physics." For the irrelevant discussion on the future of power generation in England and "blue sky research" that was out of date when this book went to the publisher, I would rather pick up a copy of Nature, Smithsonian or Omni.

I thoroughly regret wasting my money and time on this book and urge you not to do so as well.