Right now, you are reading the text of this textbook. Its design is similar to that found in traditional textbooks. By “text,” we mean the words you are reading and the illustrations and writing you see to the right.

As you read the words, study the illustrations and work the problems, you may feel as though you are using a traditional textbook. (We like to think it is well-conceived and well-written, but that is for you to judge.) You can print out this textbook and use it as you would a traditional print textbook.

When you use the electronic version of this book, however, you have access to an entirely different way of learning the material. It starts with what we call the whiteboards. You launch the whiteboards by clicking on the illustrations to the right. They present the same material discussed in the text, but do so using a sequence of narrated animations.

The text and the whiteboards cover essentially the same material. You could learn physics exclusively through the whiteboards, or you could learn it all via the words and pictures you now see. The text sometimes contains additional material: the history of the topic, an application of a principle and so on. Everything found in the whiteboards is always found in the text, so you do not have to click through them unless you find them a useful way to learn. The point is: You have a choice. You may also find a combination of the two particularly useful, especially for topics you find challenging.

If you are reading this on a computer, try clicking on the illustration titled “Concept 1” to the right. This will open the whiteboard in a separate window. Each whiteboard is equipped with animations, audio and its own set of controls. Both this textbook and the whiteboards can be used simultaneously. If you do not have headphones or speakers, click on the “show text” button after you open the whiteboard. This will allow you to read the whiteboard narration.

The electronic format provides a visually compelling way for you to learn what can be complex concepts and formulas. For instance, instead of a static diagram that represents a car rounding a curve, our format allows us to actually show the car moving and turning. We can also show you a greater amount of information − for example, how the horizontal and vertical velocities of the car change over time.

Typical sections throughout the book feature three graphic elements on the right side of the page, corresponding to three parts of the whiteboard. The first introduces the concept: For instance, what does the term “displacement” mean? The second contains the equation: How is displacement calculated? The third, located at the bottom right, then works an example problem to test your understanding of the concept and the equation.

The textbook contains hundreds of these whiteboards. If you would like to view some more to get a sense of how animation and audio play together, you can browse any chapter. You can explore topics like displacement, graphing simple harmonic motion, hitting a baseball, electric field diagrams, determining the type of image produced by a mirror and the force of a magnetic field on a moving charged particle.

For more advanced topics: pressure-volume graphs and heat engines, spacetime diagrams and inductor-capacitor circuits.

To move to the next section, click on the right-arrow in the black bar above or below, the arrow to the right of 0.1.