Customer Reviews

Essentials of Polymer Science and Engineering

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I used this for a undergraduate MSE polymers course.

Pros: 1. Extremely easy to read.
2. Great historical inserts.
3. full fledged color and gloss finish.

Cons: 1. Too EXPENSIVE for this kind of text.
2. Derivations are funky and incomplete.
3. Perhaps the most annoying, there are no example problems which always bothers me.(Aside: in my opinion this means the
authors are just regurgitating information they have acquired over their career's rather than critically giving insight to
the possible real world applications.)
3. Problem sets are weak.

This is one of the worst textbooks I have ever had to rely on for a class. Perhaps the greatest failing of the work is that the authors choose to use a sort of cheeky humor as a replacement for actual explanation. Don't get me wrong, I believe humor should be included in most books to lighten the mood and prevent students from being discouraged, but this book uses it as a replacement for explanation instead of a supplement. On many of the more complicated concepts the book seems to just wave its hands and say: "look, here's the answer... just trust us on this one." Beyond this, the overall tone of the writing is a bit condescending (phrases like "it should be obvious at this point" etc), which makes for a frustrating reading experience.

This delivery coupled with seemingly non-sensical picture choices (the author's dog... really?) equates to a terrible introduction to the world of polymer science.

As a side note: this is not simply my own opinion. In a recent poll of our class (which is roughly 20 students) 100% of students said that this book was inadequate. Not a single person believed that this book was a useful tool.