Key to the Ninth Edition’s support for critical thinking and development of understanding physics concepts is Jearl Walker’s modern voice. Jearl Walker is both an active teacher, who understands the challenges faced in today’s classroom, and a world renowned communicator of science to the general public. His Flying Circus of Physics is a cult classic among physics students and instructors and material from this book is integrated throughout the Ninth Edition to catch students’ attention, engage them, and encourage them to solve the underlying real world physics phenomenon and concepts, before they begin the more quantitative portion of the content or problem.
- Integration of The Flying Circus of Physics. Material from The Flying Circus is incorporated into the chapter opener puzzlers, Sample Problems, text examples and end-of-chapter problems to make the subject more interesting and engaging and to show students that the world around them can be examined and understood using the fundamental principles of physics. Links to The Flying Circus material are identified throughout the text with a biplane icon.
- Checkpoints offer stopping points so students can check their understanding of a question with some reasoning based on the narrative or sample problem they just read.
- Sample problems are chosen to demonstrate how problems can be solved with reasoned solutions rather than quick and simplistic plugging of numbers into an equation with no regard for what the equation means.
- Key Ideas in the sample problems focus a student on the basic concepts at the root of the solution to a problem.