To me the hard part of physics is the calculation of what happens when two objects collide - I need to calculate not only the new movement vectors for the objects, but also any rotational movement changes/additions. The PhysicsForGameDev.. book makes some effort in this area, but the information is presented in overly techy science notation. Can anyone point me towards a kind of ''Dummies guide to collision response'' that will cover calculation of positional and rotational vector/speed changes after collision?

It''s not epsecially easy to do it properly: the math is by nature pretty complex as it involves so many things.

The best intro to it I''ve seen is in Chris Hecker''s 4th GD Mag article, available here. The previous three articles cover 2D dynamics and so act as an introduction to the fourth.

Yes, I only want to do 2D to start with, but it seems such maths it not as easy as it looks - I mean trigonometry is no problem for me, but physics formulae start to do my head in!

Take a look at the Baraff papers. They have long derivations of formula''s but in the end they come up with one single formula for collision response, and it works fine.
The papers are located here:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~baraff/sigcourse/index.html

It is the 3d version though, but you could probably derive the 2d version quite easily...

Oh and about that Physics for programmers book. I think that book focusses too much on the specific topic of each chapter, and describes what you need to type into any editor to get it working, while it could have been about 1/8th of the size if they just described a pretty much complete but simple physics engine. In other words, it''s IMHO not a very good book to learn programming physics from. You''re better of getting papers from guys like baraff, and chris hecker (http://www.d6.com/users/checker/dynamics.htm)

Just my .02

Cheers!
Nick