For someone with such a good sense of humor, you’d think he would have written a more entertaining physics book.
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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we had that book in uni, 5th edition or so i think. it was so expensive that it was cheaper for me to buy an e-book reader and pirate the book. and this was when the original kindle was like 300 bucks.
It's criminal how much unis charge and they don't even throw in the textbooks, it was bad when I was studying and it's only got worse
The thing is that a lot of first and second year physics has not really changed in a while (understatement I know) .
You would hope there would be more open text books and Duolingo for physics.
Openstax's physics books cover roughly the same stuff as young and freedman at least.
The computer science department at my uni passed a department-wide rule that the total cost for all required materials must be zero dollars. Very thankful for that, saved me a decent chunk of money.
Talk to your state government about actually funding education for its people again.
That addresses the funding side, but there's a corruption/conflict of interest side to it, too. Like when the author is also a prof or when the publishers offer kick backs to requiring the textbook.
My habit in uni became to start the class ignoring the required texts and then maybe get them if it turned out the class leaned on them heavily, though I sometimes also just tried making do without them if I felt like I was following the material fine without it. Most classes I just seemed to miss out on extra practice problems.
Though years later now, I do appreciate the ones that I do still have, which includes a physics book (though not the one in the OP). It means I can do refreshers rather than the entire class potentially being lost to my memory.
That addresses the funding side, but there's a corruption/conflict of interest side to it, too. Like when the author is also a prof or when the publishers offer kick backs to requiring the textbook.
Sometimes? I went to an R1 where many of the professors wrote the book on their respective subject, so using an other text for their own teaching may have actually downgraded the experience. Even then it didn't happen frequently. I also knew one prof who used his own book. You may be right about the nefarious behavior for some publishers, but he was pretty open about his cut and it was shockingly small per book.
I was actually speaking more to the funding of education in general, which was one of parent's main points (texts on top of the exorbitant costs).
That wasn't an issue prior to the Reagan administration who led the charge to refund education decades ago, and successfully pushed most of the states to abandoning our public assistance (and putting the burden largely on the individuals and their families).
Text prices are too high, and have been for many years. That isn't as much the universities as it is the publishers, bookstores, and other nefarious entities. Universities largely don't set book prices, they just pass them on to the students. There really isn't much choice.
Yeah, and some profs are really good about it, even if they wrote the textbook. Like a lot of my profs would talk about how it was possible to photocopy the course notes package pages, that there were ways to get textbooks without paying for them or even offered to send a copy of the pdf master to anyone who asked because writing the textbook wasn't intended to gouge students.
But I've heard the opposite story, too, where the prof wrote a textbook that was barely even used but added it to the required texts list. Profs in my program weren't that bad, but I did see some of the textbook publisher response to those kinds of profs, where they'd have a website and buying the textbook was really about buying a code to sign up for the site. Luckily, most of those didn't use the site for real assignments, so it still wasn't mandatory but the rent seeking was obvious.
But yeah, wish it was similar to Europe in the Americas. Canada might be a bit better off, though I might just be saying this as someone who went into a well-paying career and actually managed to pay off my student debt pretty quickly. Government forgave some of the student debt I had through them when I graduated (actually a decent chunk of it) and this even happened automatically (was a very pleasant surprise).
But I wish the public saw how increased access to education helps improve things for everyone, even if you don't get educated directly (though I'd support a system that gave universal access to education so no one is being completely denied, though some gating based on ability would help avoid waste time).
But I wish the public saw how increased access to education helps improve things for everyone, even if you don't get educated directly (though I'd support a system that gave universal access to education so no one is being completely denied, though some gating based on ability would help avoid waste time).
That would be wonderful, but the public perception is a hindrance (like high speed rail, medicine access, etc.).
The US is wildly propagandized against our own best interests.
Yeah, I'll change my wish to I wish people weren't so susceptible to propaganda, especially the really shallow stuff that falls apart the moment you stop and think about whether it really makes sense (like the old "they hate our freedom" argument).
But then again, if the simple stuff didn't work, then it would just get more sophisticated and maybe the really dumb propaganda is required to recognize its other forms.
I don't think funding is the problem. Colleges receive alot of money, but I feels like the resources are spent on people that probably shouldn't be in school.
I'm a pretty smart dude, but the fact that I qualified for a full scholarship with housing in 7th grade says alot about the state of our education system. If a teacher is teaching a hundred students that probably aren't benefiting from it, their time and resources are spread thin.
....I don't think it was possible to fail most of my classes as long as I showed up.
Ok, but in this case you are incorrect. The whole "spending money poorly" thing doesn't match up to the financial reality of most schools, in particular the many small ones. I've spent a good portion of my career in higher ed (among other things) administering my own paltry budget.
And your poor experiences aside, I promise you that what you are describing would work in any program I've administered unless the 7th grader was already capable of college level work. You just make it sound like you went to a rather low quality school.
Go back to pre-Regan days. The state paid for around 90% or so (depending) on the coat of education.
By the 2000s or so that number dropped to a paltry amount (something more like 15%).
My parents' generation could go to a state school and pay off their entire bill for a year doing a few weeks of summer work. Now people rack up years worth of debt.
The financial reality is educating people is expensive. Just hiring enough competent professors and staff for a small university is potentially a rather significant number of millions annually. We need to go back to funding it socially rather than putting the burden on the individual.
...yyyeaaah. absolutely.
*slowly hides the "the state pays for tuition, even in other countries" sign behind back*
Wish my state would!
My Alma mater had a lot of profs who were really concerned about textbook costs. They tried to provide free PDFs as much as possible for course materials instead of books we had to buy.
But then also at this same school is a physics prof who required the exact textbook mentioned in this meme! I still have my copy at home!
As for general tuition cost inflation: that’s a very complex subject. Schools are in competition with one another to attract the best students and generally the most enrolments overall. They spend a lot of money (usually donated by rich families) building new fancy facilities and renovating existing buildings. The new buildings then need a lot of staff to maintain them as well as provide services to both students and faculty.
Over time this has led to a dramatic growth in the size of non-teaching staff at universities (administrative bloat), a major contributor to tuition cost inflation. The other major contributor is the Baumol effect, which has inflated the cost of all human-limited (as opposed to machine-limited) fields. Look at how expensive it is to get a haircut today vs 50 years ago, for example.
I absolutely loved my lecturers in uni.
They did all sorts of things to hint at getting the books for free, like Z Library at the time and such. Once a lecturer arranged to turn her back to the board and be ambiguous about her mentions, with a student putting the link written on paper on the board.
They thought it was also bullshit to pay so much for material, and encouraged piracy since we were paying a fair bit for tuition and such anyway.
yeah that's usually how it goes. except when they're the ones who wrote the book...
This sort of situation happened with one of my Calculus books in college. The new edition came out, there were no used copies yet, and e-readers didn't yet exist so I had to buy the crazy expensive book (over $300 and that was over 20 years ago). The book store offered to buy it back for a measly $20 bucks after the class was over. I refused on general principal, I'd rather give it away to someone.
You can't escape the laws of physics
we come in peace
shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill
staaar trekking, across the universe...
Boldly going forward 'cos we can't find reverse!
It's worse than that. He's dead Jim...dead Jim...dead Jim. It's worse than that. He's dead Jim...dead Jim...DEAD!
The kids will never know how awesome it really was to be a kid like when we were being kids.
Is this book good?
It's fine, just overpriced (and kind of massive). Openstax has a comparable three volume set of books that is free.
Wow I didn't know about Openstax, thanks bro (^3^)/
Fuck his corrupt ass
I've had classes with a couple textbook authors and every time they strongly imply that we should pirate their books. People write textbooks out of frustration with their alternatives, not out of profit motive. The publisher is the one making most of that cash.
Bro what 😭😭😭😭me when I write an educational textbook
Rebekah is childish tho
Never lose your child like joy for the physical underpinnings of the universe 😊