The purpose of this book is to show you how to do physics problems. It is only through application of concepts to solving problems that we can know for certain that we understand something. Nowhere is this more true than in a physics course where performance is measured almost exclusively by your ability to do problems.
This book is not a collection of problems. Neither is it a text. It is an attempt to strike a balance between theory and problem solving with heavy emphasis on the problem solving. As such it is intended to complement your
course text. Generations of physics students, the authors included, have often lamented, concerning their
physics courses, "I understood everything in lecture and the text but I can't do the problems." This book will
help you do the problems.