Hi so I'm taking physics 1B03 in the summer. I know for some courses people say to get the textbook. For others, people say not to. What do people who've taken this course suggest I purchase for this course?

I believe Ken Sills is teaching in the summer, and if so, his lecture notes are amazing! You can do great in the course by just using his skeleton notes and filling them in during lectures. But I would also recommend buying the textbook (you can get previous editions much cheaper) since you will need it to re-learn material from high-school that is not deeply covered in this course (such as elastic collisions - the text does some really helpful examples). You will probably also need the text to understand the more complicated aspects of the course such as simple harmonic motion and waves. But don't buy the solution manuals unless you usually tend to do questions from the text (you probably wont since theres way too many CAPA questions to do already). As for the black lab notebook, don't buy it from titles because the lab coordinator (Alex) will usually sell it for like $2. The other lab book with the pre-labs and procedures you will have to buy from titles though. Am I missing anything? Good luck on the course, it's not as bad as people say it is.

I have an offer from someone willing to give me the first addition textbook. Does anyone know how different it is from the second edition (which we are required to use)?

Also we need iclickers for this course right?

i have the first edition while my roommate had the second. they are exactly the same except the chapters are moved around a little and yes iclickers are worth 5% i think

Yeah the textbook is a must. You don't really need the solutions manuals, but some of the CAPA questions were identical to the questions at the end of the chapter (some of which had solutions in the manual). Overall, I would say the manuals weren't that helpful, because you could solve the CAPAs through study groups, online (Yahoo Answers, Jiskha), or the TAs in Thode. I personally found the TAs to be extremely helpful!! I just wish I took advantage of Physics help from the start. When preparing for the tests, make sure you can do all the CAPA questions because sometimes they took test questions right out of the CAPAs. The lab manual was all online except for the pre-lab questions which you need to hand in: http://www.physics.mcmaster. ca/~voroby/1B03Labs/
Overall, this was a hard course. You really need to be prepared and have done the readings before you go to lectures. But anyways, hope you do AWESOME!