Oct 07, 2016 03:30 PM
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First let me give my personal opinion. I went through a hell lot of text books on physics while preparing for IIT. I went through Resnick Haliday, I went through H.C Verma's books, I went through Tipler, I went through many other text books by local authors. Of all these, H.C Verma's books easily stand out as the best book to educate you on physics. Let me give some reasons.
Lucidity. Most physics text books would brag that they are lucid, but none is more so than this book. Every chapter starts grounds up, takes a real world example on which the chapter is bulit on, slowly veers into equations to formulate the concepts. The method remains consistent in all chapters. At no point will you find a sudden jump which leaves you confused.
Examples. The worked out examples in the book are just fantastic. Particularly the ones in the chapters of Sound Waves, Lenses. I managed to solve all exercise problems totally by myself just by going through those examples. A good example is one which teaches you lots of concepts within a short span, these examples do exactly that. I cleary remember one example from Electromagnetism, it's about the movement of a particle under the influence of electric and magnetic fields simulatneously(called Lorentz's Force). The example was so brilliantly solved that I managed to solve several problems from Irodov based on that example alone. And it specifically helped me crack 3 questions(part of a comprehension) in the IIT Physics paper.
Terrific MCQs. This is one of the most underrated aspects of these books. Each chapter has set of MCQs at the end which the students are supposed to solve before jumping into the exercises. The MCQs are absolutely terrific, and will make you think, revisit the one line in the chapter which you glossed over, ensure that your concepts and fundamentals are all in place as you start solving the exercise problems. While most students go for a specialist book for MCQs, like the one by Deb Mukherjee, this book can give them a serious run for their money. As an example, just go through the MCQs at the end of the chapter on Friction or Rotational Dynamics, you will get what I mean.
The highlight of the books are the chapters on Rotational Motion, Friction, Newton's Laws of Motion, Sound Waves, Electromagnetism, Simple Harmonic Motion and Optics. There are some chapters which could have been dealt with better, like the ones on General Properties of Matter, Modern Physics. But overall, the book is fantastic in every sense of the word. Definitely a must read for all students who want to understand the fundamentals of physics inside out.
