OER Reviewed: University Physics Volume 1 (OpenStax)

Reviewer: Jennifer Kirkey, Instructor of Physics and Astronomy, Articulation Chair of Physics and Astronomy, Douglas College

The reviewer will be using it in January 2021. The Department reviewed this set of books before changing from Physics by Halliday, Resnick and Walker to these books starting September 2020.

Rating

Each criterion asks the reviewer to rate it on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = very poor and 5 = excellent).

Comprehensiveness – Rating: 4

The OER covers all areas and ideas of the subject appropriately and provides an effective index and/or glossary.

This OER is appropriate for PHYS I/II of the Engineering Common Core.

PHYS I of the ENGR common core is motion and waves

Openstax Volume 1

• Unit 1 Mechanics
• Unit 2 Waves and Acoustics

Openstax Volume 2

• Unit 1 Thermodynamics
• Unit 2 Electricity and Magnetism

Openstax Volume 3

• Unit 1 Optics
• Unit 2 Modern physics including relativity and quantum mechanics

It is a good book.  Not a great book but as good book.  Others will wax poetically about the standard book by Knight or the new one by Mazur, but this book is just fine.

It integrates calculus throughout. That pun was deliberate.   In fact, that is one of the few criticisms.  It is based more on the US curricula and assumes that the student has already done differential and integral calculus, though in BC calculus is often being taken at the same time.   For example they do separation of variables to solve questions occasionally. They also use integrals to find time, i.e., t = integral of dx/v. Lastly, they talk about “exact differentials” in the context of conservative forces.

In my experience about half of the students in the Douglas College equivalent of PHYS I (PHYS1110) are either taking integral calculus or have taken it. Overall, the calculus level to be quite a bit higher than Halliday Resnick and Walker, which is one of the common standard textbooks.

One of the weak points of the book is the focus on math over physics.  It is difficult to tell students “ignore this example” frequently.

The index is comprehensive.  The OpenStax books tend to be very well organized, and this one is true to form.  An index at the back of the book.  Each chapter at the end has a listing of “key terms” and a summary.

Content Accuracy – Rating: 4

Content, including diagrams and other supplementary material, is accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

This is a well written and well proofed text book.   It is accurate, error-free and unbiased. Openstax makes good books.

Relevance/Longevity – Rating: 4.5

Content is up-to-date, but not in a way that will quickly make the OER obsolete within a short period of time.  The OER is written and/or arranged in such a way that necessary updates will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement.

The nice thing about first year physics is that it is applying Newton’s Laws that are now more than 400 years old.  It does have up to date examples that illustrate the physics but nothing that make it obsolete within a short period of time.  The cell phones and other equipment looks very early 2000s, but that is not a fatal flaw.  It will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement new examples as our technology continues to change.

Clarity – Rating: 3

The OER is written in lucid, accessible prose, and provides adequate context for any jargon/technical terminology used.

This is a well written book.  To repeat, Openstax makes good books.  It is very United States focused an assumes an intimate knowledge of sports.  An example of this is on page 202 which is a question about two dimensional motion with hockey players.  While there is an illustration, it needs a before and after picture as not everyone will know about the importance of a goal and the blue line.  It spends a lot of time on the names of the players, one of whom stopped playing in 2019.   This is not a horrible thing, but annoying.

Consistency – Rating: 5

The OER is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework.

This a well written book.  To repeat, Openstax makes good books.  Well proofed.

Modularity – Rating: 4

The OER is easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections that can be assigned at different points within the course (i.e., enormous blocks of text without subheadings should be avoided).  The OER should not be overly self-referential, and should be easily reorganized, and realigned with various subunits of a course without presenting much disruption to the reader.

This a well written book.  To repeat, Openstax makes good books.  Well proofed and well organized.  Like most physics books it is large.  Volume 1 is 1009 pages long with 17 chapters.  Each chapter has about 10 sub-sections.   It can be reorganized fairly easily.

A suggestion to BCcampus. I think it would be money well spent by BCcampus to make up a Pressbooks version of Openstax University Physics that clearly reflects PHYS I II III.  It would be easier for the BC physics community to start adding to those books.  The modularity of the books would make that project relatively simple.

Organization/Structure/Flow – Rating: 4.5

The topics in the OER are presented in a logical, clear fashion.

This textbook uses the classic format of a first year physics textbook.  That is a criticism to some (I repeat, that some will wax poetically about the books by Knight and Mazur).  It is logical and clear.

Interface – Rating: 5

The OER is free of significant interface issues, including navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader.

This a well written book.  To repeat, Openstax makes good books.  Well proofed.   It is available online and in print, including hard cover.  Nice use of colour, and consistent.

Grammatical/Spelling Errors – Rating: 5

The OER contains no grammatical or spelling errors.

I could not find any grammatical or spelling error.  This a well written book.  To repeat, Openstax makes good books.  Well proofed.   I have not yet used the book in my class, I will be doing so in January of 2021, but I have looked it over carefully in preparation for that and not found any errors yet.

Diversity and Inclusion – Rating: 2.5

The OER reflects diversity and inclusion regarding culture, gender, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, education, religion. It does not include insensitive or offensive language in these areas.

This OER reflects the diversity of genders (female and males) in the illustrations and examples, for example saying “a professor walks back and forth in front of a chalkboard” and the professor is a woman.

It does not do we well with cultural  and national origin.   I looked at every page up to page 405 which is the end of Newton’s laws.   There are literally hundreds of illustrations of humans doing physics things up to that point, but only seven of them are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of colour)  Page 55 photo of hands that are clearly BIPOC.  Page 110 photo of cyclists in Vietnam.  Page 223 illustration of a BIPOC person- the first illustration.   Page 335 photo of a runner who is BIPOC.  Page 358 second BIPOC illustration, Pages 405 and 406 has two photos of BIPOC people playing sports.

For example, in projectile motion there is a drawing of a tennis player in a specific stadium.  They write out the stadium name.  The young woman in the drawing is of fair complexion with long blonde hair.  Serena Williams won her first Grand Slam in 1999.

Cultural comment.  There are a lot of armed forces photographs and examples.  This might be as it is easier to get CCBY photos from the US Army, but as a Canadian I found it jarring.  For example, page 132 is a photo of a racing car and the caption is “US Army pilot … in a dragster”.  Page 286 in the section about vertical motion and air resistance has a picture of an armed forces member in camouflage firing a motor shell upwards.  Many of the questions in the energy and power section have the unit conversions for energy be in pounds of TNT and atomic bombs.  I support the military but it feels excessive.

Page 721 on fluids talks about “master” cylinders.   Primary and secondary cylinders are the more common usage.

Recommendation

1. Do you recommend this resource for the specific course taught in the first-year engineering common curriculum (in place of a commercially available resource)?
   Yes, I recommend this resource for PHYS I/II in place of the readily available commercially available resources.   Depending on what order you teach the topics in PHYS I/II you will likely need both Volume 1 and Volume 2 from Open Stax.
2. If yes, please briefly summarize the reasons for recommending this resource.
   
   This is a classic first year physics books.  This a well written book.  To repeat, Openstax makes good books.  It will be a good resource for the students and it is at the level needed for the ENGR Common Core PHYS I and II.  Several institutions in BC are already using this – KPU I know for certain is, and we just started using it at Douglas College.
3. If not, why?  What improvements, if any, could be made?
   
   It assumes that students have already taken a first year calculus course with both derivatives and anti-derivates.  It is common that students in BC are taught the calculus they need in the physics class before covering it in more depth in their calculus classes, (this was true for me in Ontario more than 30 years ago) so either an appendix or an optional section in Chapter 3, the introduction to motion chapter, would be useful.  I will be providing that to my students when I teach this course in January.    You can keep telling students to ignore certain examples and assigned questions, but it does get annoying.
4. What gaps in content have you identified?
   No gaps, unless you include the calculus treatment mentioned above.

   There needs to be more questions, and more questions with photos and illustrations.  A lot of this material is identical to the Openstax College Physics which is algebra based.  I have been using that book for about five years now.  And I mean identical, cut and pasted.  The authors here were being efficient.  I will be using lots of my material from that book as handouts and questions for my students.  I would recommend that Openstax University Physics use even more of the problems from College Physics, but it might have been a choice due to the already large size of the book.

   Openstax University Physics Volume 1 covers motion, force, energy, linear momentum, angular momentum, static equilibrium and elasticity, torque, fluids, waves, wave interference and acoustics which maps well onto PHYS I in the Common Core.

   If the instructor wants to reference heat energy as part of PHYS I then they will also need Openstax Volume 2.  While Thermodynamics is explicitly part of PHYS III, often faculty like to teach more about heat and temperature changes as part of the law of conservation of energy with conservative and non-conservative forces.

   What is needed in BC, and elsewhere, is a resource that combines calculus and physics as these two courses should in my opinion be co-taught in a cohort.