Customer Reviews

Engineering Fundamentals and Problem Solving

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

...Unfortunately, if you are an engineering student and forced to buy this as a textbook (the only reason to ever own it) this tome shall unjustly deprive you of both. The first eight chapters of the book wax philosophical on the various aspects of engineering. If you're in some kind of freshman engineering survey class, any engineering professor could lecture you on these general points and provide the same insight and then some. The second half of the book wanders all over the place - statistics, mechanics, electrical theory, etc. - information that will mean little until you have completed your freshman and sophomore engineering and physics classes, and then it will mean even less because everything is explained so generally and in such a shallow fashion. All I can say is that instructors who assign this paperweight as a textbook have forgotten how budget-conscious students need to be. The following is the table of contents for the fifth edition, published in 2007:
1 The Engineering Profession
2 Engineering Design - A Process
3 Engineering Solutions
4 Representation of Technical Information
5 Engineering Estimations and Approximations
6 Dimensions, Units, and Conversions
7 Preparation for Computer Solutions
8 Statistics
9 Mechanics
10 Material Balance
11 Electrical Theory
12 Energy
13 Engineering Economics
Appendix A Selected Topics from Algebra
Appendix B Trigonometry
Appendix C Graphics
Appendix D General
Appendix E Plane Surfaces

The Good:
- You have a book for your engineering class

The Bad: (Almost everything)

1) Almost all of the questions at the end of a chapter have NOTHING to do with what was discussed in the corresponding chapter. What's worse is that there are so few answers in the back of the book, so you often can't check your work to see if you truly understand a concept without going to another text.
2) Additionally, even though this is the 5th edition, the authors must have no commitment to checking their answers to the questions they drafted since they are also incorrect far too often.

3) Honestly, most of the stuff in this book is stuff you will learn in general physics, mathematics, and engineering statistics. The only chapter that may be of any benefit is sections to do with stress or strain of materials. Everything else will be covered in more detail, and far more effectively, in later courses.

TL;DR - Don't buy this book, even if it's required. Buy a book more specific to your engineering discipline and learn from that. Your professor would be more impressed with that anyway. Also, if you have a terrible professor and you expect to depend on this book for your learning, you will fail miserably because of how terrible this book is.

I really wish I could like this book, but I could've written a book better than this.

Book was in perfect condition when I got it, I use it for more than just engineering. Great book in general

This book was required reading for my class, that's the only reason I own it. There are so many spelling and gramatical errors in this book it is down right hard to read. The problems themselves are almost never broken down, the book expects you to know how to do these problems on your own. This is a fundamentals book, it is supposed to show you how to do the basic problems. So unless you are required to buy this book try and find something else, or at the very least try and find a used one.