<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Same old thing... new questions
Review: Book is good for most average students. Clear text structure, ample iilustrations and comprehensive worked out examples. However, since I also own a copy of the 4th example, these was not much change to the basic text. Just new reworked questions and a few different examples. A good book for an average student and certainly a good buy. But if you have the 4th edition, maybe you wouldn't need a new one.
Rating:
Summary: Beams, Beams, and more Beams
Review: I am a civil engineering student who just finished a course in stregth of materials with this text. I found the book fairly easy to follow with good example problems. My main complaint is that the authors consistantly referred to diagrams and figures that were on different pages, causing the reader to flip back and forth. Sometimes the figures were 5 or 6 pages back. This interrupted the continuity of the text, making it more difficult to read. Otherwise, I feel the book is excellent. (If you care, I got an A- in the course. Take this however you want to)
Rating: 
Summary: Mechanics of Materials, 4th ed.
Review: I am a civil engineering student who just finished a course in stregth of materials with this text. I found the book fairly easy to follow with good example problems. My main complaint is that the authors consistantly referred to diagrams and figures that were on different pages, causing the reader to flip back and forth. Sometimes the figures were 5 or 6 pages back. This interrupted the continuity of the text, making it more difficult to read. Otherwise, I feel the book is excellent. (If you care, I got an A- in the course. Take this however you want to)
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for beginning students
Review: I guess I can see some criticism from a mechanical enineers point of view for lack of fatigue failure analysis. But this book is mainly written for the beginning undergraduate for stress and strain analyis. It is by far one of the handiest and most well written books on the subject that I have come across. If you want fatigue life buy a Shigley book. If you want the basic understanding, Timoshenko is wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for beginning students
Review: I guess I can see some criticism from a mechanical enineers point of view for lack of fatigue failure analysis. But this book is mainly written for the beginning undergraduate for stress and strain analyis. It is by far one of the handiest and most well written books on the subject that I have come across. If you want fatigue life buy a Shigley book. If you want the basic understanding, Timoshenko is wonderful.
Rating:
Summary: Beams, Beams, and more Beams
Review: I know that this is considered THE mechanics of materials textbook. And paging through it, you can see that the text and figures are very well done, with every effort made to make the material clearly accessible. So in this respect, the book shines. My main objection with this text is its content. Every imaginable method of beam analysis is presented, and the tendency is to treat every stress problem as some sort of beam. Thus if you're a civil engineer designing beams, you'll probably like this book. But if you are a mechanical engineer, responsible for designing mating parts with complex geometries, you'll be sorrily disappointed. Mechanical parts in the real world are not prismatic beams, perfect cylinders, and other utopian forms. They have threads, fillets, holes and other discontinuities that produce stress concentrations -- stress concentrations that have devastating effects in fatigue if not properly accounted for. I know that some will say "Hey, if you want fatigue analysis, get a Machine Design text". But come on, let's be realistic. Many undergrad students will never go on to take such a course, and the fact that well over 90% of real world failures are fatigue failures necessitates that more than 10 pages out of 900 be dedicated to this subject. Also, there is little if any coverage on 3-dimensional stress, plate and shell theory, plasticity, tensors, and a ton of other stuff that is not overly complex, but is used everywhere in the real world. I don't care how "elementary" the book claims to be. If it's over 900 pages, it should cover these important topics. Maybe someday we'll have more practicing engineers writing textbooks -- textbooks that treat real life problems, rather than fictional, academic idealizations.
Rating:
Summary: Great introductory text for strength of materials
Review: I was surprised at how clear and thorough this book was. I read almost the entire book (left out just a number of sections), and if you're like me and need to know the proofs for the engineering models, then this is great. It explained derivations, equation limitations, and problem-solving methods in a very satisfying way - I can honestly say that, because of this book, I have a better appreciation for how engineering methods are developed. Assuming you've studied differential equations and statics, then this book will be just right for you.All the problems have solutions in the back, which was very helpful. However, occasionally I ran into problems that I needed detailed solutions to, so you might need to see your professor about those. Also, I have a strong feeling that maybe 3-4 problems out of the ~100 that I did had wrong or oversimplified solutions- but I could be wrong, or I used different approximation methods. So not counting that tiny minority of aggravating problems, this book is both pleasantly informative and challenging, and it made me continue to like engineering, unlike some other books/classes I've used/taken.
Rating:
Summary: Great introductory text for strength of materials
Review: I was surprised at how clear and thorough this book was. I read almost the entire book (left out just a number of sections), and if you're like me and need to know the proofs for the engineering models, then this is great. It explained derivations, equation limitations, and problem-solving methods in a very satisfying way - I can honestly say that, because of this book, I have a better appreciation for how engineering methods are developed. Assuming you've studied differential equations and statics, then this book will be just right for you. All the problems have solutions in the back, which was very helpful. However, occasionally I ran into problems that I needed detailed solutions to, so you might need to see your professor about those. Also, I have a strong feeling that maybe 3-4 problems out of the ~100 that I did had wrong or oversimplified solutions- but I could be wrong, or I used different approximation methods. So not counting that tiny minority of aggravating problems, this book is both pleasantly informative and challenging, and it made me continue to like engineering, unlike some other books/classes I've used/taken.
Rating:
Summary: Mechanics of Materials
Review: Thank you for the book and getting it to me asap.
<< 1 >>
|
