Teacher Reviews of Widely Used Physics Textbooks

Holt Physics (Serway & Faughn), Physics Principles and Problems (Zitzewitz), Conceptual Physics (Hewitt), and Physics: Principles with Applications (Giancoli) were the most widely used textbooks for regular high school physics courses during the 2008–09 academic year. Holt Physics and Zitzewitz were each used by about one-third of the teachers responding to our Nationwide Survey of High School Physics Teachers. Hewitt's text was used by approximately one-fourth of the teachers who responded, and 6% of the respondents reported using Giancoli. We also asked the respondents to tell us how well the text worked for the course. The good news is that well over 80% of the teachers find that all four of these texts work quite well or somewhat well for teaching regular physics.