The screaming yellow physics review book that I attempted to work with last week was not helpful. In fact, it was confusing and even intimidating. Its notation was full of subscripts and superscripts and initials and carat-marks and arrows which were not only for vectors. Their way of approaching well-studied material somehow made it unfamiliar to me. So I have put it back on the shelf, for now, and picked up instead, yet another basic physics teaching and review text which I've had for a while now but haven't used yet. This is from the now-familiar Schaum's Outlines series, with the bright red spine. The cover has some bright yellow, but is mainly bold, bright text in red and dark blue on white. It does not convey panic, but confidence. This is what it means to be an artist studying physics: you actually pay attention to the design of your text book's cover.

Longtime readers of this journal will remember how much I liked the Schaum's outline for trigonometry. Schaum's does physics too, of course. Their text is in two volumes, both of which I have, and so I'm doing my review of basic statics and kinematics in volume I. This is BEGINNING PHYSICS I, by Alvin Halpern, of Brooklyn College and City University of New York (as the title page advertises). Professor Halpern has graciously given his precious time to write these textbooks for toiling students and at least one middle-aged artist, namely myself. He's also written a companion text called 3000 SOLVED PROBLEMS IN PHYSICS which sounds, depending on who is facing it, like an extended punishment, or a vacation in a land of fun and abundance. There are problems galore in my BEGINNING text, so I don't need the three thousand, at least not now.

To my relief, the numbers and texts are clear and the notation is in symbols I recognize. I've already done some of the problems and gotten them right. I am pleased to page through the first half and see things I have not forgotten. Vectors: did that. Acceleration: been there, done that. Coefficient of friction, Newton's laws, forces and equilibrium: Show you know them by solving those problems. Momentum: well, maybe, we will see. As the promotional text on the back of the book says, "Get the edge on your classmates. Use Schaum's!"

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