Textbook in PDF format

Competitive Physics grew out of a Physics Olympiad course taught by Wang Jinhui at Hwa Chong Institution — intended to prepare students for the annual Physics Olympiads and to imbue deeper knowledge in physics beyond the typical high school syllabus. It quickly became a collaboration with his former trainer in the Singapore Physics Olympiad national training team, Bernard Ricardo.
Competitive Physics is meant to be a theory-cum-problem book. The first half of each chapter explores physical theories with illustrations of how they can be creatively applied to problems. The latter half of each chapter revolves around puzzles that we hope will intrigue readers, as we believe that problem-solving is a crucial process in grasping the subtleties of the contents. Therefore, we have included a multitude of problems which are ranked by increasing difficulty from one to four stars. Some problems are original; some are taken from the various Physics Olympiads while the others are instructive classics that have withstood the test of time.
This book is the first part of a two-volume series which will discuss general problem-solving methods and delve into mechanics and waves — setting a firm foundation for other topics that will be presented in the second volume. We envision problem-solving to be a fun process — from the initial excite ment of approaching an unfamiliar problem, to the joy of pitting all of one’s knowledge against it and finally, the satisfaction earned from solving it after numerous failed attempts. In light of this, our goal is to spread the passion of problem-solving — an infectious hobby. It is difficult to quantify the factors that make a problem interesting or elegant but the following have been our guiding principles in writing Competitive Physics