- The Cartoon Guide to Physics (Cartoon Guide Series, 5)

Good book I passed my class

Larry Gonick is a genius at teaching. his fun drawing style and light sense of humor help bring entry level content on topics many have hated in a way they can get into w/o realizing they are learning! i have a phd in molecular biology and also do museum exhibit design and can see both sides of the content and its delivery and the man just knows how to reach folks intuitively then feed them lots of great content to make a hated topic for them fun again. My wife never had physics and this was perfect for her to get the basics. ive given the statistics books to many folks who hated stats and never got it and they all were amazed at how easy it actually was! his history books have a bit of very light irreverent humor, but this puts things in a way to make you think about history, not just learn names and dates, and by thinking about it you LEARN something from history useful for the future. he also is a great story teller so lessons have some sort of character and story usually associated with them or bit of humor, something that helps the mind recall the facts and concepts much more easily than just them given blandly on their own. Any of his books are a wonderful gift to anyone who wants to learn a bit about a subject they were scared of or hated and enjoy it. makes the for dummies books look dumb! these are the next best thing to having a great teacher with you!

"The Cartoon Guide to Physics", first published in 1990, is one of a series of Cartoon Guides which Larry Gonick has co-authored with scientists in the field of choice; in this case it is with Art Huffman who is in the physics department at UCLA. Outside of Larry Gonick's excellent "Cartoon History of the Universe" series, this is the best of his books that I have read. There are two sections in the book: `Mechanics', and `Electricity and Magnetism'. The first section deals with motion, forces, Newton's Laws, Energy, and associated topics. The second section deals with electricity and electrical fields, and magnets and magnetic fields. It also touches on relativity and quantum electrodynamics. They do not cover topics such as String Theory or Chaos Theory, which have become increasingly more publicized since this book was published. This book works well as an introduction to the topic, or as a refresher. There is not enough substance for this to serve as a text book, nor do they provide a bibliography to assist the reader in finding more in depth books on any of the topics. However, Gonick does a wonderful job of blending the history of the field with the topics that are covered, and he does so in a way which does not overwhelm the reader.

My son has a strong interest in science and two years ago at Christmas I was looking for a book on physics that would appeal to him. The textbooks that I'd looked at were too dry and formal, the ones for kids too simple. This one was just right. I purchased this after reading that it was written as a high school and college study book in one of the reviews here. He'd already had an introduction to physics from reading Basher's little book on it (Physics, Why Matter Matters), but he wanted something more challenging that gave him more information. He was really happy when he got this book and he carried this book around for months, reading it. I liked that concepts I'd never been able to grasp before were explained in a way that I could understand (with a cartoon drawing to help make it more clear). This dog-eared book has finally been put on the bookshelf, but I expect he'll pull it out to read it one more time again before too long. Since he was 8 years old when he got this we didn't focus on the mathematical equations related to the physics concepts much, although we did talk through many of them when reading together. Also, just because it has cartoons doesn't mean it was written for children. This isn't a little kid's book and some of the reviewers seemed disappointed by that fact - but that is exactly why I bought it.

I bought this for my 13-year-old daughter who enjoyed her physics lesson in her GT 8th-grade class. She sat down and read most of the book. She didn't do any of the example work, but she enjoyed the book and I think it was a perfect introduction as she moves into high school. I think anyone who needs to learn the basics of physics would benefit. It's taught from a basic perspective so it's easy to understand even for beginners. My daughter is very bright and adapted quickly. Because it arrived the last week of school, she wasn't motivated to do more than look at it, but she actually took the time to go through the entire book over the next 2 weeks. The illustrations are entertaining and very effective. The explanations are clear and I definitely recommend it.

I bought this for my 10 year old son (now 11). Incredibly, he read all the way through it! He has always been interested in physics, and has often asked me questions about it. But this gives him a more systematic description of the different concepts involved, and it's written in a way which makes it inviting for him to read. Of course, this is just an introduction. But I think that introduction to these concepts at a young age will allow these concepts to percolate and become established in his mind over the years until he encounters them in school. I believe he will be able to handle them much more easily at that time, and hopefully to be able to go further and handle the more complicated concepts he gets introduced to then.

I guess it's okay to not be very funny, because they're cartoons, not comic strips. But leading the reader into wrong thinking is REALLY BAD for a "guide" to do. For example, p.9,10,11 he repeatedly says that things feel a Force _opposite_ their acceleration ... but on p.24 he says Forces cause acceleration in the same direction. He does revisit these on p.59&60, but it is not very explicit there , so can be easily missed ... and it still leaves 50 pages of confused thinking! For tides (p.29), he switches first quarter with last quarter. Around p.30, he's not consistent with what he calls "weight" ... mg or external force by some scales. page 31 he has reversed cause and effect for gravity and mass. P.36 a "guide" would accentuate that ½gt² is the bullet's _vertical_ distance from straight-line (not the perpendicular distance that geometry class would construct). page 43 he draws an impossible orbit, and not in a humorous way, so the reader might internalize it. p.44 he draws incorrect orbits for Moon around the Sun - it never travels "backward" like his "corkscrew", and his drawing makes it look like Earth is repelling the moon. His rotation chapter is hindered by not mentioning the right-hand rule, and his explanation of precession in terms of F=ma is completely botched. Besides mistakes like these, he seems to acCENT the wrong asPECTS - possible to create charge pairs from gamma rays. He also doesn't "foreshadow" the subtle important foundational ideas - "field" is not mentioned until page 117, AFTER most of the situations that would illuminate its usefulness. In this sense it is NOT WORSE than most textbooks, but does not act as a "guide" should. For example, he DOES show the right-hand rule for magnetic force, but without ever drawing a right hand ... unbelievable! His chapter on "Relativity" (except for ascribing Maxwell's displacement current to Einstein) is a well done quick introduction (translation: that's how I usually do it) - worth reading. So it's not funny enough to be much motivation, not complete enough to stand alone, and too many mistakes to be much of a guide - but I HAVE seen textbooks worse than this, and it's only about $15. go for it.

Great for learning the basics in cartoon format.

believe me or not.....Mr. Gonick has really made his whole cartoon series like simpler than anything else.....all the concepts are elaborated in lucid manner.....any body can learn physics....real worth for money....i am suggesting it to my friends they all are appreciating hope you too....

Excellent refresher

Our 9 year old keeps it next to his bed and I have to turn off the lights to get him off it.

My 9 years old kid has been reading it since I bought it for him as his birsthday present. He has read most of the book. There is a very nice combination of figures, drawings and explanations that help keeping my kid's focus on different topics and not loosing the interest (which they easily do in this age). To summarize: well worthed the prise and of great educational value.

Questo è un ottimo libro a fumetti il lingua inglese. La fisica è presentata in maniera molto accurata e divertente. I testi sono facili da tradurre anche se in lingua inglese. Consigliato.