Overview of the Book

The eReader and Editable eBooks Platform

Expert TA delivers the refined OpenStax University Physics text through our modern eReader, giving students an intuitive reading experience with built-in tools for highlighting, note-taking, instructor annotations, and flexible printing options.

For instructors who want more control, our Editable eBooks Platform makes it possible to customize the textbook to match your course. You can reorder chapters, hide content you do not cover, and even combine your own materials such as lecture notes, lab handouts, or supplemental content into a single unified course resource. Our team can also help convert instructor-created materials into accessible, compliant digital formats so your content is ready for long-term use and institutional accessibility requirements.

Learn more about the Editable eBooks Platform here.

About the Authors

David Marx is a professor of physics at Illinois State University. In his more than thirty years of teaching, he has continually sought to improve his teaching methods to reach both non-scientists and future physicists alike. He has written several teaching supplements that are used by instructors all over the United States for both algebra-based and calculus-based introductory physics courses. He believes that courses should be taught as interactively as possible; and thus, was an early adopter and promoter of the clicker technology at Illinois State University. He is the recipient of a University Teaching Initiative Award, Dean’s Award for Teaching, Impact Award, and the Student Teachers’ Association Teaching Excellence Award. He is also author of Energy: Connecting Earth and Everyone, a textbook used in general education courses on energy and the environment.

Matt Kohlmyer joined The Expert TA in November 2025 as a content developer. Prior to that, he spent nearly 15 years employed in the educational technology and science publishing industries. His industry experience includes working at WebAssign as a product manager, and later at Cengage as a subject matter expert and learning designer. He received his Ph.D. in 2005 from Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in physics education research, after which he spent several years teaching university physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology and at North Carolina State University. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

How Faculty Feedback Shaped the Rewrite

We conducted very structured honorarium-based focus groups, circulated surveys, and met to engage with individual faculty directly, but at a high level, this is what we were looking for from faculty.

Here are recurring themes we heard — and addressed in the rewrite:

• A need for consistent voice, notation, and presentation across chapters
• Stronger emphasis on motion diagrams and graphical reasoning in kinematics
• Clear graphical treatment of derivatives (slope) and integrals (area under a curve)
• Elimination of examples that rely on concepts introduced in future chapters
• Ensuring key terms are defined before use
• Improved sequencing of foundational topics
• More careful and consistent treatment of significant figures
• More consistent notation from one dimension to multiple dimensions
• Cleaner and more consistent notation (e.g., using t_i and x_i for general initial values)
• Careful treatment of terminology, including concerns around the phrase “centripetal force”
• A more concise and streamlined presentation

A Collaboration with the Physics Education Community

Input from the Community
Most people know OpenStax. Because the book is free, most instructors have evaluated it at some point, and many instructors have adopted the text. We communicated with hundreds of instructors to understand faculty perceptions of the book. Our authoring and editorial teams worked to separate the signal from the noise and to use the major themes of input as guidance for the rewrite.

A more Cohesive Text
One of the most consistent messages we heard was the desire for a more unified voice and instructional approach. The original OpenStax text reflected its many contributors—a strength in perspective, but a challenge in terms of cohesion.

A Dedicated Authoring and Editorial Group
Expert TA’s University Physics was written by two primary co-authors, guided by a dedicated editor and an advisory committee with deep experience in both physics instruction and physics education research. This group leveraged the abundant input from the community, being careful to separate one-off suggestions best described as individual preference from recurring messages that reflected structural problems with the text and pedagogical issues in how the material was presented.

In addition to addressing content- and area-specific issues, the team worked to:

• Maintain consistent notation and style
• Improve sequencing across chapters
• Align pedagogy throughout the text

 
The result is a text that feels intentional from beginning to end.