Archaeology of a Bookstack: Some Major Introductory Physics Texts of the Last 150 Years

Beyond its teaching purpose, a textbook of introductory physics is also a historical document. It contains the physics and the pedagogy of its authors and their times, and reflects the era in which it was written. This article—paralleling an exhibit prepared by the American Physical Society's forum on education for display at the APS centennial celebration in Atlanta this month—examines historical aspects of introductory physics texts. It begins with a 19th-century text, Ganot's Physics, and then works up to the present, examining various editions of popular introductory college-level texts by Millikan, Franklin, Duff, Sears and Zemansky, and Halliday and Resnick (figure 1). It is interesting to see what has changed in the teaching of introductory physics over the last 150 years and what has remained the same.