This text is intended to be used in the first semester of a two-semester series of courses teaching introductory physics at the college level. The associated text for the second part of the two-semester series is currently under preparation. The text is intended to support teaching the material at a rapid, but advanced level - it was developed to support teaching introductory calculus-based physics to potential physics majors, engineers, and other natural science majors at Duke University over a period of some twenty-five years.
Students who hope to succeed in learning physics from this text will need, as a minimum prerequisite, a solid grasp of mathematics. It is strongly recommended that all students have completed at least through single-variable differential calculus (typified by the AB advanced placement test or a first-semester college calculus course). Students should also be taking (or have completed) single variable integral calculus (typified by the BC advanced placement test or a second-semester college calculus course). In the text it is presumed that students are competent in geometry, trigonometry, algebra, and single variable calculus; more advanced calculus is used in a number of places but it is taught in context as it is needed.
Note that the material covered in the introduction and math review sections are not really intended to be lectured on. However, it is strongly suggested that you urge, armtwist, assign, or otherwise encourage students to read the Introduction and skim read and review the Mathematics section sufficiently carefully that they can use it as a reference as they need to while working on the actual course material. The book is laid out in this way so that the generally indifferent mathematical skills of a typical college freshperson are not a significant barrier to learning physics, and so that indeed learning physics becomes something of a stepping stone to understanding calculus better and developing algebraic and geometric skills in very practical ways.