1. Prescribed Text - on Short Loan

There are a number of copies of it available in the Short Loan collection in the Kate Edger Information Commons at 530 U78.  Unfortunately there does not apear to be an electronic version of your textbook.

2. Useful reference books

Online physics dictionaries:

Oxford Dictionary of Physics, 5th edition, edited by Daintith, 2005.

Dictionary of material science and high energy physics, edited by Dipak Basu. Boca Raton,Fla, CRC Press, 2001

The following reference books are available in the Science reference collection ( on Level M of the General Library):

Benenson, W.(2002) Handbook of Physics. (Sci,ref 530 H236)

Cohen, E. Richard (2003) AIP Physics Desk Reference. 3ed. (Sci, Ref. 530 C67).

Crocker, Malcolm J. Encyclopedia of acoustics. 4v. Wiley (Sci, ref.534.03 C93).

Goetz, J. A.(1984) IEEE standard dictionary of electrical and electronics terms. (Sci,ref 621.303 I11)

Lerner, R.G & Trigg,G.L.(1991) Encyclopedia of physics. 2ed (Sci,ref. 530.03 E561 1991).

McAinsh, ed. (1986) Physics in medicine & biology encyclopedia.2v. Pergamon. (Sci,ref 610.153 P57)

Parker, S.P,ed. (1983). McGraw-Hill encyclopedia of physics. (Sci,ref. 530.03 M14e.)

Payne, Peter A. Concise encyclopedia of biomedical measurement systems. Pergamon (Sci,ref 610.28 C74)

Online encyclopedias:

Encyclopedia of acoustics

Encyclopedia of Energy

Encyclopedia of Mathematical Physics

Concise encyclopedia of supersymmetry and noncummulatative structures in mathematics and physics, ed S. Duplij. et. al.

Note: there could be other online reference books as well. Once you have learned how to use the Library catalogue, you will be able to search for them.

An online book

Hobbie, Russell K.(2007). Intermediate physics for medicine and biology. Springer.

3. Assignments and tests - how to find information

Experiment 1. Speed of Sound in air.

Your textbook should be your first source of reference. Read "Urone, P.P. College Physics 2.ed. pages 407-409". There are five copies of this text available on Short Loan.

A print encyclopedia that will cover the topic and give many interesting articles is: Encyclopedia of acoustics. 4v Crocker, Malcolm J, editor in chif. NY,Wiley, 1997.v.1. This is held in the Science Information Services reference collection on Level M of the General Library at Dewey no.Sci,ref.534.03 C93. This is a chance to see a good collection of Physics reference books.

There is also an online Encyclopedia of acoustics which you will find at http://www.springerlink.com/content/h8422k/

Physics books in the General Library are on Level M. Among others, here are some which may be of interest:

Berg, Richard E. The physics of sound. 3rd ed.Pearson, Prentice hall, 2005. (534 B493.)
Rossing, T.D and Moore,F.R. The science of sound, 3.ed. Addison Wesley, 2002. (534 R83 2002).
Rossing, T.D. Principles of vibration and sound. New York, Springer, 1995 (online)
Sen, S.N. Acoustics: waves and oscillations. NY, Wiley, 1990.

Various journals on acoustics are now online, such as::

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Journal of sound and vibration.

NOTE; Voyager, the Library catalogue does not usually include articles in journals or chapters in books. It does include the journal and book title, author, etc.record though. Journal articles can be found by searching databases. It is not necessary
to know how to use databases at stage 1 level but you may like to know that the main database for Physics material is INSPEC. If you are studying medicine next year, your subject database will be MEDLINE. Another useful science database is SCOPUS. This is cross disciplinary.

Experiment 2. Viscosity and Fluid flow

Your textbook should be your first source of reference.

Urone, P.P. (2001) College Physics 2 ed. Canberra, Brooks/Cole, pp. 281-286.

Other books that may be useful are:

Duncan, G.(1990) Physics in the life sciences. 2 ed. Blackwell Scientific, p. 74-79.(Philson Library QT34 D911).
Cutnell, J.P. & Johnson, K.W. (2004). Physics. 6th ed. Wiley,p.322-324. (Short Loan 530 C98 2004).
Marion, Jerry B. (1979). General physics with bioscience essays. Wiley (old, but could be interesting)
Viswanath, D.S. Data book on the viscosity of liquids. NY, Hemisphere Publishing, 1989, p.1-22. (Sci,ref 532.58 V83).

Experiment 3. Walking

Your textbook should be your first source of reference.

Urone, P.P.(2001) College Physics, 2ed. Canberra, Books/Cole.pp. 118 - 21.

Other textbooks on Short Loan that may be useful are:

Jones, Edwin & Childers, R. (2001) Contemporary College Physics. 3 ed.Boston, McGraw Hill. 530 J76.
Cutnell, J.D. & Johnson, K.W. (2004) Physics, 6th ed. Wiley. 530 C98 2004.

A couple of reference books which have articles on walking are:

McAinsh, T.F. Physics in Medicine & Biology Encyclopedia. v.1.(listed above). p. 352 -358.
Payne, Peter A. Concise Encyclopedia of Biological and Biomedical measurement systems. (listed above).pp. 177 - 180.

Note: Encyclopedias are a good way to read up quickly on a subject if you know little about it, eg. when you have an essay topic and want to extend your knowledge of the topic. A thing to be aware of is that good encyclopedic articles have a Bibliography or set of references at the end of the article.

A serial article required?:
Physics Education 29:352-57, 1994. moving the human machine: understand the mechanical characteristics of normal human walking.

Experiment 4. Resistivity and Ohms Law.

Your texbook should be your first source of reference.

Urone, P.P (2001) College Physics, 2 ed. Canberra, Brooks/Cole,pp.479-486.

Jones,E. & Childers, R. (2001) Contemporary College Physics. 3ed. Boston, McGraw Hill. pp 561-562.
Cutnell, J.P. & Johnson, K.W. (2004). Physics. 6th ed. Wiley,p.580-584.

If you require further information you should now be able to do a simple Voyager (keyword) search to find books that will cover your subject. Try some reference books too.

4. Library competencies for Physics Stage 1 students

Undertake a Library Tour

Save yourself time and energy later in your course by attending a Library tour as soon as possible. Your orientation of the Library, both the Kate Edger Information Commons and the General Library, will be so much greater for taking this brief tour. Among other things you will learn where resources such as print stations, photocopying & interloan facilities are located. General Library tours occur at the begiining of semester.

Understand Voyager the Library catalogue

Use Voyager, the Library catalogue, to locate other material held by the Library and to view your Patron record in order to renew and to recall books. Voyager is available in all libraries of the University and on the Internet. NOTE; Voyager does not include articles in journals. It does include the journal record though.

You will find most of the search hints you need on the search page where there is a self-taught tutorial which you can work through.

Voyager introductory seminars are available with a range of times and dates to choose from. Book online from the Library homepage

Book a Library workshop. Make sure that you note the campus, time, and the venue, at the time of booking.

Another useful course which would help you find your way around the University Library is Library & Resources Overview. Book from the the Library homepage Book a Library Workshop link. This is a popular course which will run throughout the semester but there is a concentration of courses at the beginning of semester.

Know the differences between books and journals & how to cite references to them.

Books (sometimes referred to as monographs) are published once but may be released in later editions, particularly textbooks that are regularly updated even if only sections of them are revised. Most scientific books are considered secondary literature because they assimilate and evaluate literature from primary sources such as serials and conference proceedings. They may have one or many authors, but may also have editors. The reference to your textbook looks like this...

The authors of the book are R A Serway and J W Jewett. Its the 7th edition and was published in 2008 by the publisher Thomson-Brooks/Cole of Belmont.

A reference may also refer to a specific chapter or part of a book. Here is an example....

The author of the chapter titled "Magnetic interactions in correlated electron systems" is J.D Thompson. It is found on pages 107-130 of the book called "Selected topics in magnetism" which was published in 1993 by World Scientific Publishing. The book was edited by Gupta and Multani in volume one of a series called Frontiers in solid state sciences.. If you were to find this book in the Library catalogue Voyager, you would have to search for the whole book, not the chapter by Thompson. (Note: a series does not come out at regular intervals, but haphazardly, as material is published.)

Serials

The latest results in scientific research get published in Serials or Conference proceedings which are sometimes known as primary literature because they contain articles in which the research is being presented for the first time. However if the serial contained a review article, that article would be considered as secondary literature, because a review assimilates concepts and results from primary sources. Unlike books, serials are published at regular intervals. One part of the serial is called an issue, and issues are identified by numbers or dates. When a certain number of issues have been published (usually one year's worth, that set of issues will comprise one volume).

Once researchers have results of their research they write up their findings for publication in the form of an article. Articles normally include an abstract, keywords, an introduction, method, result, conclusion and Referenes or Bibliography.

The abstract is a summary of the paper. It is accompanied by a selected number of keywords that will guide readers to the content at a glance. Databases use these same keywords to index the articles.

References or Bibliography. This is a list of articles that the author has consulted before conducting the research. In this way the author acknowledges the work of other scientists. Note that the author can quote text from other articles as long as the original authors are acknowledged. If the work is copied without acknowledgement, that constitutes plagiarism which is an illegal offence.

Once the paper is submitted to a chosen serial, the editors of the serial will send copies to several other authors in that field for evaluation. This is called peer review. If the reviewers feel the paper unworthy, the editor may return the paper to the author for amendment. Only after amendment will the paper then be accepted for publication. This process ensures that the serial contains only quality articles. Journals are rated against each other and allocated an Impact factor number.

A serial reference is done in a standardized way so that anyone, anywhere in the world, can locate it. This is why librarians ( and you) can quickly find the articles that you have found cited. Here is an example:

The authors are listed first. Here there are two. Sometimes one author is listed followed by 'et al' which means "and others". The year of publication follows, then the article title followed by the serial title(which is often in italics), volume, issue and page numbers..

8. Understand plagiarism

The key to a good essay is using good references and substantiating your arguments in your own words. Reference your essay fully and use scientific (unbiased) terminology. Edit your work carefully. Be aware that although you are citing the work of others and using their results, you cannot copy their articles word for word (ie. plagiarism). The standard for submitting your work is the same as when an author submits a paper to the editor of a journal. NOTE: "periodical" and "serial" are other names for "journal"- they are published periodically).

For further information on references see the Library homepage > Study and research help > Reference styles used at the University of Auckland.

5. Other Library Services

Databases

(whether print or electronic) are used for searching for serial articles on chosen topics. The most comprehensive database for finding Physics articles is INSPEC. Another useful electronic database is Scopus. It is not necessary to know how to use databases at stage 1 level but you may like to know about them.

INSPEC  is the core abstract on-line database for physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers & computing and information technology. INSPEC indexes international journals , conferencce proceedings, reports, dissertations and books with links to full-text articles when available. If you would like to know more about INSPEC, please contact the Subject Librarian for Physics (see details above). It is advisable to learn INSPEC by the end of your Physics stage two year.

Scopus is a new multidisciplinary database for many sciences. It includes Physics. Coverage is from pre-1960 but abstracts begin from 1966. There are many links to full text articles on Scopus.

Short Loan: how to find material in this collection:

Material that is in heavy demand is placed in the Short Loan Collection, which is located on Level 1 of the Kate Edger Information Commons. Much of the material is now available electronically. To find out what is in the collection go to the Voyager home page and click on Course material search: In the box labelled Course scroll down until you find the sequence beginning PHYSICS 160. Short Loan material for each Physics paper can be located here arranged by paper number.

Inter-Campus Library Delivery Service (ICLDS)
You do not have to travel to a library collection on another campus (e.g. City Campus, Off-Campus Storage, Tamaki Campus, Epsom Campus or the Medical Campus). Books and serial volumes may be delivered free of charge from our campus libraries.
From the Voyager record simply click on the Recall/Intercampus button.

The Subject Librarian Service.

Science Subject Librarians provide a specialist service for staff and students in all areas of science taught at this University. The Subject Librarian for Physics, who is available to help you in all Library matters, is: Michael Parkinson. (see details at the head of this course page)

File last updated : 08-Mar-2011
Comments and suggestions to : Michael Parkinson [Physics Subject Librarian]