Can you get a college physics book in PDF or Lit format?

Factual Questions
1

So, I have scheduled a college physics class. I like to do something like this each year. I am going to buy a physics book - $80.00 or so. It would be of enormous value to me if that book was available in pdf or lit format, so I could have it available on my notebook pc. I am quite capable of scanning it myself, and I will do so if I have to. But, I thought maybe someone out there might have done this already. Hence my question:

Can I get my college physics book in pdf or lit format?

2

Which textbook is the course using? We’d need to know that before we could tell you if a PDF or LIT version existed.

That said, it seems exceedingly unlikely that such a thing would exist. Physics isn’t like English or History: the texts are frequently updated and their content is still under copyright, unlike a course where you’re reading Shakespeare or Marx.

3

try here http://spot.colorado.edu/~dubin/bookmarks/b/1240.html and http://motionmountain.dse.nl/welcome.html and here http://www.lightandmatter.com/ for some free ones

4

Yeah I should have given you the name of the book, its the, “Fundamentals of Physics.” Here is an Amazon Link. Amazon lists the book for $147.00 or more, Half.com has it cheaper.

Like I said, I can scan it myself if I have to, but it would be nice to get a pdf or a lit file of it.

5

that amazon link has used copies for as little as $15 - at taht price hardly worth the hours it would take to scan it

6

The reason that a lot of those copies are dirt-cheap is that they’re out-of-date — certainly, some of them are the sixth (previous) edition and not the seventh (current) one. And you want to make sure that you have the same version the instructor’s using — while it might be possible to go through the course with an older edition, it would be a tremendous headache.

Publishers of college texts aren’t stupid, and they know that if they made an e-text version of their textbook available, it would quickly circulate among the students and cut into their sales. In all likelihood, you’re just going to have to suck it up and scan it yourself (all 1,328 pages.)

7

Why can’t people simply answer my question?

I would like my physics book in a pdf or a lit format because it is much easier to search through a pdf file as opposed to searching through a text-book. I can put links in a pdf or a lit file pertaining to current topics. And, I can store that file on my notebook computer. These things ought to be obvious to everyone. So dont tell me, “at that price its cheaper to just buy another copy of the book,” because buying another copy of the book does not accomplish my objectives.

Now that that is over with…

Has anyone done this already? Perhaps someone knows a site where I can purchase it? Perhaps someone knows something else that is not apparent at this time.

Any legitimate help is appreciated people.

Ficer67

8

Thanks for these links, they are proving useful. I went off before I had read the entire post.

Yes, I know that publishers are not going to make any electronic copies of thier books. Even if they could sell them. Students being on the budgets that they are are not going to pay for anything that they do not have to pay for.

I have to buy the book from somewhere. I may as well buy it as cheap as I can get it. And I have scanned some big files before, and it doesn’t take as much time as it would seem. So this is the way I am going.

Thanks for everyone’s useful information

Ficer67

9

Just in case:

I am sorry if I offended anyone by popping off that way. I did not read every post before I typed that blurb.

My only excuse is that too often on this message board people digress to points that they like to talk about and never even consider what the op requested. This is not what happened here, however.

Ok thats all

Later people

Ficer67