Halliday & Resnick Editions

March 20, 2016 1:00 PM

I picked up the first edition of Halliday & Resnick's Physics from my local bookshop. My goal is to work through it (along with a calculus text) for fun and profit. Will I be missing out on anything important by using the original 1960's text, rather than one of the more recent ones (now titled Fundamentals of Physics)?
posted by stinkfoot to Science & Nature (12 answers total)

I remember comparing editions of this book once. Main thing that stood out was that the later edition with Walker has more goofy humor (a slide-loving pig in a friction problem, for example.) As for the actual physics content? No idea.
posted by Wulfhere at 1:19 PM on March 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't know about that book specifically, but there have been a lot of physics discoveries since the 1960s. Check out this random wiki timeline I found via google: timeline

If you truly want to learn physics, I'd highly recommend getting your hands on a current textbook.
posted by FireFountain at 1:33 PM on March 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Eh, if you are just looking at Newtonian physics and basic E & M, things haven't really changed at all. Even basic relativity (and in intro physics you don't get past the basics) should be in there. I remember reading an essay about the stupidity of textbook prices making the point that you could drop a time traveling physics 101 student from the sixties into a modern lecture hall and they would recognize the content as basically the same.
posted by rockindata at 2:33 PM on March 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

If you compare with the table of contents of the current edition, I doubt you'll see much difference in content coverage.
posted by BrashTech at 3:45 PM on March 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: It will be fine. The only thing I'd watch out for is that sometimes terminology and conventions have changed. E.g., they might refer to condensers (now almost always called capacitors) and they might use cgs units instead of mks.
posted by kiltedtaco at 3:57 PM on March 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

The only substantive difference can think of: a modern edition probably has more and/or more developed exercises meant to be solved on a computer. No book at this level is going to go deep into computational physics, of course, but if you want a taste you're more likely to find it in a textbook from this century.
posted by egregious theorem at 4:16 PM on March 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Halliday and Resnick is a classic, perhaps the best introductory physics textbook ever written. I still have a second edition, 1967, on my shelf and occasionally refer to it. You won't be missing anything by using it. The newer particle physics and quantum mechanics is beyond its scope as a first year textbook.

Do you have the combined Part I and Part II? In the back are the answers to odd-numbered problems to check your work. In addition, with a little googling you should be able to find the instructor's solution manual that shows the reasoning and steps.
posted by JackFlash at 4:20 PM on March 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

older editions of these sorts of textbooks are almost always better: more coherent, less flashy pointless formatting, more compact... you really won't be missing out. even "modern" physics is now almost 100 years old.
posted by ennui.bz at 4:40 PM on March 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Nothing to add other than Resnick was my prof at RPI in the early 80's and those text books sit on my shelves to this day. great stuff.
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:16 PM on March 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

I am not sure if Halliday and Resnick (and Krane? We had Krane in my day..) do this, but it's not uncommon to update textbooks with little historical vignettes about various discoveries, including increasing their gender balance (maybe they added something about Emmy Noether?).
Additionally, although the physics subjects studied in an intro physics course haven't changed, pedagogy on them has; I can't say about a modern version because my own Halliday-Resnick-Krane experience was almost two decades ago at this point.
I did get a kick out of comparing my copy to my dad's though; and even nabbed my dad's when I went off to college. (Partially because it amused me that he'd highlighted so much of it). I do recall there being (minor) differences in presentation style, and I think more tables in the older one.
posted by nat at 10:04 PM on March 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you folks!
posted by stinkfoot at 6:23 AM on March 21, 2016

I've got a 2nd edition on my shelf. The first 40 or so chapters will be fine, without correction, the analytical mechanics and the EM sections. The QM and SR portions are largely ok too, as they stick to the basics mostly and that hasn't gone out of date really either. Atomic spectra and the like haven't changed since the early 1910s when they were first being measured. The nuclear stuff has changed, and I wouldn't bother too much with that. That's only a couple of chapters at the very end in all.

The 2nd is also very strongly SI, which is great---the only real caution I'd have is if they used cgs in the first edition. That's not wrong, but it's pretty out-dated. cgs units get really weird in the EM parts and you don't want to go down those roads. The 2nd edition is fine, but can't vouch specifically for the first.
posted by bonehead at 12:14 PM on March 21, 2016