Your AP physics textbook may have seemed difficult to read early in the year. But now that you have heard lectures, solved problems, and read our guide, try reading your text again—you’ll be amazed at how much more clear the text has become.
If you’d like to look at another textbook, these are a few that we recommend:
Physics B
• Giancoli, Douglas C., (1998). Physics (5th ed.). New York: Prentice Hall.
• Cutnell, J. D., Johnson, K. W. (2000). Physics (6th ed.). New York: Wiley.
• Jones, Edwin R., Childers, R. L. (2000). Contemporary College Physics (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Physics C
• Tipler, P. A. (1999). Physics (4th ed.). New York: W. H. Freeman.
You might also find this book helpful:
• Hewitt, P. G. (2002). Conceptual Physics. San Francisco: Addison Wesley.
(Hewitt’s is the classic text for readable, non-mathematical expositions of physics principles.
If you are having trouble seeing the meaning behind the mathematics, check out this book.)
Just for fun, we also recommend these books . . . they might not help you too much for the AP exam, but they’re great reads.
• Feynman, R. (1997). Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman! New York: W. W. Norton. (Collected stories of the 20th century’s most charismatic physicist. If you ever thought that physicists were a bunch of stuffy nerds without personality, you should definitely read this book. One of our all-time favorites!)
• Hawking, S. (1998). A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam. (The canonical introduction to cosmology at a layperson’s level.)
• Lederman, L. (1993). The God Particle. New York: Dell. (Written by a Nobel Prize-winning experimental physicist, this book not only discusses what kinds of strange subatomic particles exist, but goes through the amazing and interesting details of how these particles are discovered.)
• Walker, J. (2007). The Flying Circus of Physics, 2nd edition, New Jersey: Wiley. (This book provides numerous conceptual explanations of physics phenomena that you have observed. The classic “Physics of the world around you” book.)