The
book covers five aspects: force, electromagnetism, oscillations, thermology, and
optics. As international students at this level have already finished high
school courses in their own countries and have acquired some basic physics
knowledge, this book focuses on the following goals:
1. In
terms of content, it highlights the sequence of knowledge. This revised edition
is based on the new Physics Syllabus for Foreigners Taking College-Prep Courses
in China on CSC Scholarship. Some out-of-syllabus knowledge points have been
taken out to make the content more clear and focused. Besides, oscillations, thermology
and optics have been moved to the later part of the book according to actual
teaching practice and difficulty of the knowledge.
2. The
language is made more suitable for physics teaching. As students found the
first edition difficult to read, this edition has simplified the language used.
While keeping the language scientific and precise, the author has avoided lengthy
descriptions and changed the examples students found hard to read to easier
ones, and provided English explanation and pinyin for the difficult key words. Two appendices, “Chinese-English professional
glossary” and “English-Chinese professional glossary”, have been added to
facilitate students’ study and research.
In terms of knowledge, it
pays attention to the connection with college physics, trying to help the
students smoothly move on to undergraduate studies. Pertinent examples and
exercises have been added to meet the testing requirements prescribed in the
new syllabus; the exercise types have been designed referring to the question
types in the graduation tests of college-prep programs on CSC scholarship, with
a larger number of exercises also; certain out-of-syllabus exercises have been
removed and substituted with exercises better matching the new syllabus.
Dr. Xiao Lifeng is a lecturer in the Physics Department, School of
Science of Tianjin University, teaching college physics, college physics
experiments and other courses.