Customer Reviews

Engineering Mechanics: Statics (9th Edition)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book is essentially a large collection of problem sets with breif explainations of the concepts and formulas needed to solve them in between. Illustrations are well done and helpful for solving the problems and the appendix contains answers for all but every fourth problem. You will not gain much insight into the fundamental physics behind statics and you will not find mathematically rigorous derivations of equations but you will become proficient at solving a large number of "typical" situations in engineering using them. If you have a solid background in physics and mathematics (classical physics and single-variable calculus) you will find this book to be good source for practicing your problem solving skills and staying familiar with the basic concepts. Nearly all are of a computational nature with very few conceptual exercises included. If this is the first time you have seen the ideas presented in this book then the problems will be more challenging due to the lack of depth in Hibbler's explainations and examples. I would recommend using an engineering physics text such as Halliday's or Serway's to help grasp the concepts and Hibbler's for practice problems.

This book is fair. Its strengths are the quantitiy of problems presented and the fact that the answers to nearly all the problems are in the back of the book. The diagrams to the problems are also very good. The weaknesses: presentation of the concepts is light. It is difficuly to build an intellectual understanding of the material from the reading. The "whys" are not explained. Methods are presented a la carte. This book desperately needs a solutions manual.

If you are buying this for an Engineering Statics class, I would suggest trying to locate the 9th edition, 1st printing. Although the text portion is identical, the problem sections in the 2nd printing often refer to illustrations that are nonexistant or incorrect. In addition, the many answers have no correlation to the referenced problem at all. Our instructor assigns many problems as homework, and this has caused major headaches for a majority of the class. I have compared the two printings, and the 1st printing does not contain these errors. Otherwise, the book does a very good job in explaining the various concepts. NOTE: The people at Prentice Hall are unsure if new replacements will be available until after this semester (Spring 2003). DO NOT BUY THE 2ND PRINTING IF YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO WORK THE PROBLEMS.

I found this to be a poorly written engineering textbook. This is the case for several reasons:

1. Organization. Much material is presented in an illogical order. For instance, centriods are coverd in I belive Chapter 8, whereas distributed loads are covered at the end of chapter 4. One cannot solve distributed load problems without the ability to find centroids. Granted, there is a page and a half explaing the concept, but such is no subsitiute for a full consideration of centriods.

2. Lack of appendix information. I found there to be a lack of useful charts in the appendix. For instance, there is a chart on centroids of common shapes, but there is no similar chart for moments of inertia. Also, the way my prof taught the course, a chart of properties of common structural members would have been nice.

3. I found the book to be poorly written. I had trouble just reading this book, it was simply a bore. Granted, I have this problem wiuth most books, but this one seemed worse than normal.

The book as a matter of fact covers all the basic subjects required for a future understanding of strength of materials. The explanations are quite long, and shorter sentences could have made it more attactive as an excellent text book. I do recommend it as a text book for a basic course.

The book has good pictures, but a very poor exlanation process. It is very dificult to follow.

This book is difficult to follow. The explanations and examples are not clear. It is bad enough that the problems are not clear cut. But it is even worse that a solution manual is not offered for this book.

We need a study guide with this book now not 6 months later after the semester is over. I do not recomend this book at all.

As a text book this one is a real stinker! The only person that should use this book is someone already well versed in the subject. The author assumes that the reader knows as much about statics as he does. If this is a required test my sympathy. Even the examples in this book are pretty lame, he works part of the problem and then leaves the rest up to the reader. There is also no solutions manual or study guide. With this one you really are on your own. If you have a choice, the book of the same title, by Robert W.Soutas-Little and David J. Inman, is a much better text. If you are required to use this book you might want to pick up a copy of the Soutas-Little/Inman text any way.

I've only gotten through the first few chapters in my course, but a solid physics 1 background will REALLY be the best help in understanding some of the concepts in this book. The examples in the book are simple enough to where you are without complex examples to help with the complex problems at the end of the chapter. Illustrations are top notch allowing 3d problems to be worked without much picture guessing.