Review
Barry Feierman and the reviewers of the Second Report.

Read three other views also.

Conceptual Physical Science: Explorations by Paul Hewitt, John Suchocki, and Leslie Hewitt and published by Addison-Wesley.

Conceptual Physical Science: Explorations is aimed at a younger audience, probably Middle School, as judged by the size of the print and the length of the chapters. If one wanted a 7-9th grade class to learn about the basic concepts of Physics, Chemistry, Earth science, and Astronomy, then this would be an appealing textbook as it is so versatile. There is also a Conceptual Physical Science text aimed at the college level, so be careful not to confuse the two. The book with the title Explorations is the text we are reviewing here.

This text covers Physics in 16 chapters including mechanics, heat, electricity, magnetism, waves, sound and light. These chapters are very similar to the Conceptual Physics textbook, with the same illustrations and many of the same questions at the end of each chapter. Material is somewhat condensed in order to fit into 280 pages.

The next 13 chapters covers a conventional chemistry textbook, but with hardly any mathematics. From the structure of the atom, to models of the atom, to radioactivity and nuclear fission and fusion, the author develops a line of the history of the growth of modern chemistry. The next 9 chapters covers elements, mixtures, chemical bonding, acids and bases, organic compounds, and the chemistry of drugs and plastics. Overall, this is a wonderful way to learn about how chemistry is important in our daily lives.

The next 9 chapters cover a traditional course in Earth Science with topics of minerals, rocks, the architecture of the Earth, water, the atmosphere and weather. The last two chapters deal with the solar system and with stars. About the only error BF found was on the caption on p. 727 referring to the Ring Nebula, where the picture is clearly the Andromeda Galaxy. Overall, the book is fascinating and adults would really learn a lot by reading it. How successful would the textbook be for the 7-10th graders wanting to learn more about the physical world? That might depend more on how the teacher included lab exercises to balance the textbook, but the book itself is exceptionally clear and accurate for this grade level.

Conceptual Physics by Paul Hewitt (3rd and 4th edition)

Conceptual Physics 3rd edition (High School) by Paul Hewitt, Addison-Wesley/Pearson

Paul Hewitt’s Conceptual Physics texts have been around for over thirty years, first as a college textbook (Little/Brown) written for Hewitt’s classes at the City College of San Francisco, and then by the mid-1980’s in its present high school version (Addison-Wesley/Pearson). This is a book that started the revolution of teaching physics to a much wider audience and with a different goal in mind; teach concepts first, then examine applications and problem solving after the concepts are mastered.

Conceptual Physics (both the book and the style of course) explores the concepts of physics first before entering the world of problem solving. Paul Hewitt, long recognized as a master teacher of physics concepts, has inspired many teachers and students to view physics in an entirely new light. His series of textbooks as well as his Figuring Physics column in The Physics Teacher has inspired a whole generation of physics teachers and students to examine and learn the underlying physics behind phenomena and then apply this knowledge to new situations.

Before 1990 many schools adopted Conceptual Physics as a text suitable for 11/12th graders who were not up to taking a more mathematical class using books similar to the level of the Giancoli and Zeitzwitz texts. Throughout the 1990’s a much wider group of high school and college students were exposed to the ideas of physics without having to master trigonometry and vector addition. Many of these students went on to take more advanced physics courses in high school and college.

Throughout the 1990’s many Physics First (9th grade) classes were beginning all across the United States, as science teachers were recognizing the potential advantages of teaching an elementary Physics course before Chemistry and Biology. Many adopted Conceptual Physics since it was one of the few books available which met the needs of the 9th grade students. Conceptual Physics (3rd edition) has seen tremendous sales because it is so well written and is “student friendly”. The author has made the book personal, including pictures of physics colleagues and students he has taught. The book gets very high ratings for accuracy and readability, and the illustrations, drawn by the author, are often funny and get the reader’s attention. Conceptual Physics may very well be the “standard” by which other Physics First books are compared.

About the only criticism of the textbook in terms of accuracy comes from one of the authors (BF) who objects to the author’s use of “earth” when referring to the planet Earth and “moon” when referring to the natural satellite of the Earth, the Moon. The names of planets and natural moons are always capitalized.

The Review Questions, Plug N Chug, Think and Explain, and Think and Solve at the end of each chapter give the teacher a lot of flexibility. Most of the Plug N Chug problems can be answered without a calculator, as they are looking at simple relationships involving proportional reasoning. The order of topics is traditional in the sense that the author begins with a chapter on the nature of science and then moves into motion in one dimension, forces, Newton’s Laws, impulse and momentum, energy and the conservation laws. Each topic is developed using previously learned concepts, and there is continuity from acceleration to force to impulse to work and energy.

One year one of us (BF) taught a 9th Physics class starting with waves, sound and light. Although the order of topics felt awkward to the teacher, the students had no problems beginning with waves and the more difficult math involving slope (kinematics) was saved for later in the year, after students learned about graphs and slope in their 9th algebra class. We have heard of other schools teaching 9th Physics in a non-traditional order, putting off the more mathematical sections until later in the year when the students’ math skills are more highly developed.

Conceptual Physics, 4th edition by Paul Hewitt

A brand new 4th edition of the very successful Conceptual Physics is now in print. One of us (BF) had the 4th edition to use with one of his 9th Physics classes during the 2007/2008 school year. The 4th edition is much more than an update of the previous edition. The 4th edition breaks with the traditional order of topics and starts with equilibrium and Newton’s Laws, then moves into motion and forces in general. The book maintains its colorful flavor of introducing the concepts with minimal mathematics, yet the RANK questions at the end of each chapter are a challenge to most of the students. You still don’t need a calculator to do the problem sets, but you must really think in order to see what the questions are asking. Since only one of the reviewers had access to this 4th edition, we did not include it in our study. However, teachers will want to look at the changes in this new edition, including the expanded problem sets in the appendix. This book may now appeal to a much wider audience, including those learning trig as part of their physics course. The disadvantage of the newer edition is the added pages and extra weight of the book.

One of the possible limitations of Hewitt’s Conceptual Physics is the failure to treat graphing more thoroughly in the early chapters. Most 9th graders are just learning how to graph (X,Y) and how to calculate slope and intercepts in their algebra class. Since many physics teachers use motion sensors as part of the physics laboratory, it would have been helpful to see a more thorough explanation of motion graphs, showing how the slope of the position-time graph was shown to be the instantaneous velocity, and the slope of the velocity-time graph was shown to be the instantaneous acceleration. The author does show this for the special case of free-fall motion, but this could have been expanded in just a page or two to include motion in general. The author does clearly distinguish between velocity and acceleration using words and formulas, but the application of graphing models to motion has been held to a minimum.