Physics - Conceptual Physics or Apologia, opinions please

[Teresa in MO]

I am considering having my dd do a Physics course. I am considering either Conceptual Physics or Apologia? Would like opinion. If you have used Conceptual Physics, which one did you use (there are numerous books out there) and where did you purchase it from. Are there other books (workbooks, tm) that you need also.

[Miss Marple]

I believe those physics programs would be quite different from one another. Apologia will need a much higher level of math than CP. I haven't used Apologia Physics, but have looked at it (and I'm not an Apologia fan).

 

CP is a more fun, hands-on approach to physics. It puts physics into the context of the everyday world. I taught CP 2 years ago in our co-op (30 students ranging in age from 8th grade to 12th grade). It was a blast. It builds the foundation for the student to understand chemistry and biology.

 

I think a student who uses CP is at a definite advantage when taking a more rigorous trig based physics later. He has learned the basic concepts and has seen how those concepts affect his life and his world. My 8th grader took the class and I intend to have him take a trig based physics as an upper level high schooler.

 

We used Hewitt's Conceptual Physics: A High School Physics Program (3rd edition?). You can get a student book as well as a teachers manual - I just searched the online book sellers (half.com, amazon, bestbookbuys.com). I used both. I did purchase the lab book that goes with the program and was able to use some of the labs. Some of them I had to customize because we didn't have the equipment required. There is a website devoted to this text also and lots of helps on the internet. I never ran out of experiments or demos!

 

The Teaching Company has a physics series that utilizes Hewitt's books which is very good.

[Teresa in MO]

would Conceptual Physics be a book she could work independently. Also, do you have the website for this book.

[Miss Marple]

I think it would depend on the student. A very good science student could probably work independently. It also depends on what you want to really accomplish in the course. Perhaps it would work best to have a video program that utilizes this book so that she does have some sort of teacher.

 

From what I experienced with our co-op, the kids can get lost easily. And, once lost, they just give up and believe that "physics is too hard for me". The demonstrations and hands-on activities are a vital part of this program, IMO.

 

Here's a link to the publishers site about the book: http://phcatalog.pearson.com/program_single.cfm?site_id=6&discipline_id=808&subarea_id=5384&program_id=18281

[Janice H]

This site has video clips that are organized by textbook, including Conceptual Physics 10th edition. http://www.hippocampus.org/?select-textbook=67

 

Click on physics on the left, and then at least a couple of the physics submenus will include Conceptual physics.

 

Next year, we plan to use Conceptual Physics 5th edition w/Instructor's manual. This is the college version. I've heard it is quite similar to the high school version, but it has the addition of a chapter on relativity and astrophysics. I went with the edition for which I could get both a student and instructor set for a decent price.