Customer Reviews

Mechanics of Materials

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The book explained the concepts of the subject well enough, but the number of typos in the problems and in the answer key led to many hours of frustration. I was often under the impression I was doing something wrong, only to find out the givens in a problem had incorrect prefixes, or some other error.

This book has a lot of interesting questions, but does not really delve into giving detailed procedures for getting answers. In the practice exercises, it skips a bunch of steps, assuming that the reader would already know what to do. At other points in the book, they painstakingly go through simple concepts. This was frustrating situation at times, which was exacerbated by having an incompetent professor. In the end, this book saved my hide by having good pictures and somewhat straightfoward approaches to mechanics problems. Also, the answers in the back of the book are a HUGE help. From them, you can usually identify a stupid mistake in your answer which could be the result of too many or too few zeros.

...and STILL the answer key is wrong. From the Wikipedia:
"In materials science, the strength of a material refers to the material's ability to withstand an applied stress without failure. Yield strength refers to the point on the engineering stress-strain curve (as opposed to true stress-strain curve) beyond which the material begins deformation that cannot be reversed upon removal of the loading. Ultimate strength refers to the point on the engineering stress-strain curve corresponding to the maximum stress."

The last edition of this book was in 2005. What exactly in the above definition of this subject matter has changed in the last four years? Are our bridges in danger of breaking into pieces and floating into space? Or perhaps the authors have lost a great deal in the stock market and picking the pockets of students who had a great supply of affordable used fourth editions was the solution to the authors' problems?

I used this book in one of its much earlier incarnations (early 90's) for a class, and it was wonderfully written. The prose was clear, the examples to the point, and the illustrations were entirely adequate. However, that was the second or so edition, and the answer key was still wrong back then. I compared the fourth edition of this book to my stepson's fifth edition, and I have to say, what is the point? The sections have been rearranged as have the questions, and it appears some of the errors in previous editions are gone, but new ones have popped up, in some cases to problems that have been in this book for years but have just been put in a different place in the book.

If this book was about the underlying subject of material science aimed at seniors or graduate students, well that subject changes quickly. However, this is a book aimed at college sophomores, and the underlying calculations have not changed. I really loved studying this subject with my second edition. Since that edition was sufficient in 1992, I don't know why three more editions with no more room for improvement with the exception of the answer key which has still not been fixed is necessary for anything but the publisher's bottom line.

I feel very comfortable recommending this splendid book to aerospace, civil, mechanical, and material engineering students. So far, this book has helped me a lot in 3 courses. Theses courses are CE 203 structural mechanics, AE 328 aircraft structures, and ME 471 mechanical metallurgy.

I have admired this book for the following reasons:

1-It has made me interested in my courses
2-It is very easy indeed to comprehend
3-It uses simple examples to explain the concepts
4-Key formulas are shaded
5-It has a good number of solved problems
6-It has a summary at the end of each chapter
7-Answers to even-numbered questions are provided at the end of this book
8-In case that you forget some basic ideas in your CE 201 (Statics), Appendix A of this book gives excellent review in calculating the moments of areas

I am sure that you will find it very useful.

This is really a great book in a hard to grasp subject.It is easy to follow ,has a lot of excellent sample problems and examples ,sudent-friendly and it is ideal for selfstudy.

I could not follow the examples or the chapter explanations. I felt as though Beer and Johnson do not want me to understand the basic concepts. I would spend hours on a few problems and understand about half the material. I would buy LINDEBURG books on fundamentals of engineering. Do not buy this book even if it is assigned to the class. Most of your classmates or going to work together on homework problems and never open the book.

this book talks about theories and derivations of formulas but has nothing about the application, its worded in a confusing jargon and while it may make sense to professors who have extensive knowledge in the field, fo students its confusing and the example problems are poorly explained and irrelevant to the practice problems. There are also tons of typos.

This book was required for my Mechanics of Materials course in my major of Mechanical Engineering. The readings and examples are pretty straight forward and easy to understand. SuperSaving shipping rocks!

This book is great! it has a lot of examples that follow right after the text explaining it. its great for those who want to teach themselves and great for classes. I have also used to reference a few times while working on projects.

This books is the only rival of the Hibbeler's book.It has full SI editions and it contains clear examples.It handles the concepts clearly and in detail. It is strongly recommended to engineering students to obtain this book with Hibbelers one.