Only tangentially related, but I know that several of us have recently had experience (good-bad-ugly) with various AP/Honors algebra-based physics textbooks.
Gianocoli
and
Hewitt
are the tried-and-true offerings there, but they often leave students (and parents) feeling like Goldilocks on a bad afternoon. The former is so example-heavy and equation-driven that it lacks any ability to offer students a reasonably firm conceptual framework to act as a scaffold for all the algebra and formulae. Obviously, for top-down learners, that is anathema.
Unfortunately, Hewitt suffers from the opposite problem-- too much fun conceptual explanation, and WAYYYYY too little math.
Our solution (my DD is taking AP Physics B right now) has been to use BOTH textbooks in tandem, but it's a little unweildy since they don't synch perfectly all the time, and the coverage is slightly different. DD really enjoys Hewitt's writing style, though, for whatever that's worth. (Giancoli often reads as though it was written by Daleks. Angry Daleks.)
Maybe the Openstax offering will turn out to be the "just right" baby bear offering among algebra-based physics texts. (I can hope, anyway!) Thanks for the link, Bostonian.
