College Physics 2e

Citation

Urone, P. P., & Hinrichs, R. (2022). College Physics 2e. OpenStax. Free official edition: https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-2e

Chapter Summary

The book has 34 chapters, about 1,650 pages, three appendices of data and an answer key. Mechanics and electricity and magnetism anchor the two halves; the preface notes that waves, optics and modern physics form units that instructors can move. Each section states learning objectives, and each chapter ends with a glossary, a section-by-section summary, conceptual questions and problems.

Chapter 1: Introduction: The Nature of Science and Physics

What physics studies and how laws and theories are formed, then the working tools: SI units, unit conversion, accuracy, precision, significant figures and order-of-magnitude approximation.

Chapters 2–3: Kinematics; Two-Dimensional Kinematics

Straight-line motion (displacement, velocity, acceleration, the constant-acceleration equations, free fall, motion graphs), then vectors added graphically and by components, projectile motion and relative velocity. Instantaneous quantities are introduced without calculus.

Chapters 4–5: Dynamics: Force and Newton's Laws of Motion; Further Applications of Newton's Laws: Friction, Drag, and Elasticity

Newton's three laws, free-body diagrams, normal force and tension, a problem-solving strategies section and an extended topic on the four basic forces; then friction, drag and stress and strain.

Chapters 6–8: Uniform Circular Motion and Gravitation; Work, Energy, and Energy Resources; Linear Momentum and Collisions

Centripetal force, the Coriolis force, gravitation and Kepler's laws; work, the work-energy theorem, conservative and nonconservative forces, conservation of energy, power, energy in the human body and world energy use; momentum, impulse, collisions in one and two dimensions and rocket propulsion.

Chapters 9–10: Statics and Torque; Rotational Motion and Angular Momentum

The two conditions for equilibrium applied to stability, simple machines and muscles and joints; rotational kinematics and dynamics built by analogy with linear motion, through rotational inertia, angular momentum and gyroscopic effects.

Chapters 11–12: Fluid Statics; Fluid Dynamics and Its Biological and Medical Applications

Density, pressure, Pascal's and Archimedes' principles, surface tension and pressures in the body; flow rate, Bernoulli's equation, viscosity and Poiseuille's law, turbulence, diffusion and osmosis, with blood flow as a recurring example.

Chapters 13–15: Temperature, Kinetic Theory, and the Gas Laws; Heat and Heat Transfer Methods; Thermodynamics

Temperature, thermal expansion, the ideal gas law, kinetic theory, phase changes and humidity; heat capacity, latent heat, conduction, convection and radiation; the first law, heat engines, Carnot's engine, heat pumps and entropy, ending with a statistical interpretation of the second law.

Chapters 16–17: Oscillatory Motion and Waves; Physics of Hearing

Hooke's law, simple harmonic motion, the pendulum, damping, resonance, waves and superposition; then sound speed and intensity, the Doppler effect, standing waves in air columns, hearing and medical ultrasound.

Chapters 18–21: Electric Charge and Electric Field; Electric Potential and Electric Field; Electric Current, Resistance, and Ohm's Law; Circuits and DC Instruments

Charge, Coulomb's law, fields and field lines, electric forces in biology; potential difference, equipotentials and capacitors; current, Ohm's law, power, AC, electrical hazards and nerve conduction; resistor networks, emf, Kirchhoff's rules, meters and RC circuits.

Chapters 22–24: Magnetism; Electromagnetic Induction, AC Circuits, and Electrical Technologies; Electromagnetic Waves

Magnetic forces on charges and currents, the Hall effect, motors and fields from currents; Faraday's and Lenz's laws, generators, transformers, electrical safety, inductance and RLC circuits; Maxwell's equations stated in words, the production of electromagnetic waves, the spectrum and wave energy.

Chapters 25–27: Geometric Optics; Vision and Optical Instruments; Wave Optics

Reflection, refraction, total internal reflection, dispersion and image formation; the eye, vision correction, colour vision, microscopes, telescopes and aberrations; interference, diffraction, resolution, thin films and polarization.

Chapters 28–30: Special Relativity; Quantum Physics; Atomic Physics

Einstein's postulates, time dilation, length contraction, relativistic momentum and energy; blackbody radiation, the photoelectric effect, photons, matter waves and the uncertainty principle; the discovery of the atom, Bohr's model, X-rays, lasers, quantum numbers and the exclusion principle.

Chapters 31–32: Radioactivity and Nuclear Physics; Medical Applications of Nuclear Physics

Radioactivity, detectors, nuclear decay, half-life, binding energy and tunnelling; medical imaging, biological effects of radiation, radiotherapy, food irradiation, fusion, fission and nuclear weapons.

Chapters 33–34: Particle Physics; Frontiers of Physics

Exchange particles, the four forces, accelerators, quarks and grand unified theories; then a survey of cosmology, general relativity, superstrings, dark matter, chaos, high-temperature superconductors and open questions.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–10: Mechanics

• Vector components: resolving motion and forces into independent perpendicular parts, the method behind projectile motion.
• Free-body diagram: a drawing of all external forces on a system, the starting point for Newton's second law.
• Conservation of energy and momentum: principles that give results without following forces step by step.
• Torque and equilibrium: the second condition for equilibrium, applied to structures and the body.

Chapters 11–17: Fluids, heat, oscillations and sound

• Bernoulli's equation: energy conservation for a flowing fluid, relating pressure, speed and height.
• Kinetic theory: pressure and temperature explained by molecular motion.
• Second law of thermodynamics: limits on heat-engine efficiency, expressed through entropy.
• Resonance: a large response when a system is driven at its natural frequency.

Chapters 18–27: Electricity, magnetism and light

• Electric potential: potential energy per unit charge, measured as voltage.
• Kirchhoff's rules: charge and energy conservation at circuit junctions and loops.
• Electromagnetic induction: a changing magnetic flux induces an emf.
• Interference and diffraction: effects that show the wave character of light.

Chapters 28–34: Modern physics

• Time dilation: a moving clock runs slow for an observer relative to whom it moves.
• Photon: a quantum of light with energy proportional to frequency.
• Half-life: the time for half of a radioactive sample to decay.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Worked examples with a fixed structure. The book has 289 numbered examples. As the preface explains, each states a problem in words, gives a strategy section on the concepts involved, then the solution and a discussion of the result.
• Varied practice. Besides conceptual questions and standard problems, chapters include integrated-concept problems, "unreasonable results" problems whose premise yields an absurd answer to diagnose, construct-your-own problems with no single answer, and multi-part critical thinking questions new in this edition. The answer key covers the odd-numbered problems.
• Biological and medical applications in the main text. Muscles and joints, pressures in the body, blood flow, nerve conduction and electrocardiograms, hearing and ultrasound, vision correction and a whole chapter on medical nuclear physics are full sections; the preface says they were expanded because many students in the course are heading for medicine.
• Supporting features. Misconception alerts, take-home investigations, links to PhET simulations and "Things Great and Small" essays that explain everyday phenomena through atomic processes before modern physics is taught.

Limitations

• No calculus, by design. Results needing calculus are stated rather than derived; the text says so for the capacitor charging curve and the Biot-Savart law. Maxwell's equations appear only in words and Gauss's law has no section of its own, so a later calculus-based course will rebuild much of electromagnetism.
• Very long. About 1,650 pages is more than a two-semester course can cover.
• Thin final chapters. Chapters 33–34 give unification, superstrings and cosmology a few sections each: an overview, not working tools.
• No mathematics review. Algebra and some trigonometry are assumed, and the appendices hold data rather than a refresher.

Where It Fits in the Course

In this introductory physics list, College Physics 2e is the full-length algebra-based course. It sits between Hewitt's Conceptual Physics, which keeps mathematics to a minimum, and the calculus-based surveys: Young's University Physics, Halliday's Fundamentals of Physics, Tipler and Mosca's Physics for Scientists and Engineers and Serway and Jewett's Principles of Physics. Choose it when the course is algebra-based, as in many programmes for life-science and pre-health students; anyone who later takes a calculus-based course can use those books for the derivations this one omits.

Kleppner and Kolenkow's An Introduction to Mechanics (a demanding calculus-based mechanics text), The Feynman Lectures on Physics (a concept-driven second look) and Gnädig, Honyek and Riley's 200 Puzzling Physics Problems (hard problems that reward insight) are best kept for after a first pass through a book like this one.

How to Use This Book

The book suits a two-semester algebra-based course and self-learners with secondary-school algebra and some trigonometry. A common split is Chapters 1–17 in the first semester and 18–30 in the second.

• Core: Chapters 2–4, 6–8, 15, 16 and 18–23.
• By programme: life-science students gain most from sections 9.6 and 11.9 and Chapters 12, 17, 20, 26 and 32; Chapters 5 and 21 suit engineering-minded readers. The extended topics (4.8, 27.9) can be skimmed.
• Modern physics: Chapters 28–31 form a short unit; 33–34 are survey reading.

For each section, read the learning objectives, work the examples with the solution covered, then check against the chapter-end summary. Mix conceptual questions with numerical problems, and try one unreasonable-results problem per chapter: seeing why an answer cannot be right is a skill exams reward. Check answers to odd-numbered problems in the answer key; the preface notes that the Student Solution Guide gives selected worked answers. Use the PhET simulations for fields and waves.

Edition and Sources

This guide is based on the official free PDF of College Physics 2e from OpenStax (second edition, first published 2022, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at https://openstax.org/details/books/college-physics-2e. The preface, the full table of contents, every chapter introduction and chapter-end section summary, the answer key and selected sections (including 24.1 on Maxwell's equations) were read.