17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
New edition contains practice problems, October 31, 2006
This review is from: Practice Problems for the Mechanical Engineering PE Exam: A Companion to the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual, 12th Edition (Paperback)
If you bought the reference book, buy this book. I know it's spendy, but do it. The 12th edition contains several great exam grade problems that anyone taking the PE exam should take time to work beforehand. I worked about 1/2 of the problems in this book, and felt well prepared for the exam. I was hoping the exam problems would be easier, but about half were about the same as the problems in this book (the other half were easier).
My frustrations were that the 12th edition still contains errors, and no errata was published when I bought this book, most were simple and straight forward, but some were frustrating.
The practice problems contain some problems that require references or ideas that are not contained in the reference book (see the problems in chapter 19, fluid power, and note that the book does not contain any methods for calculating hydraulic impedence)... there are only maybe 4 problems like this in the book, so it's not a big deal.
Also, I don't know why the author labeled many problems (1 hour limit)... some were very easy (like 2 minute problems), while other problems that weren't labeled (1 hour limit) took quite a while to compute. It'd be nicer if they were labeled (easy, med, hard) or something of that nature to make studying easier, so you could work all the problems in the area you want to emphasize in, while just doing the 'easy' ones in other areas.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Invaluable Part of PE prep., June 2, 2010
This review is from: Practice Problems for the Mechanical Engineering PE Exam: A Companion to the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual, 12th Edition (Paperback)
I bought this as a portion of my prep work for the Mechanical PE exam. I could not have prepared and passed without it. The key to passing is to doing as many practice problems as you can get your hands on. It was particularly helpful in the AM section of the exam. ASME publishes a similar product that is more specific to AM and PM sessions, but I didn't use it and have no knowledge of how good or bad it is. I feel that this reference was instrumental in my preparations for passing the PE exam and would highly recommend it to anyone aspiring to take it. Now, one thing worth looking at is the price difference in purchasing this product here at Amazon or directly from [...] as a part of a package. One good thing about purchasing directly from PPI is that if you have any defects with the book, they will replace it for free- I experienced this with my MERM.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Helpful for Studying, May 4, 2008
This review is from: Practice Problems for the Mechanical Engineering PE Exam: A Companion to the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual, 12th Edition (Paperback)
I worked through several of these problems before the exam. Most of the problems are harder than the problems on the exam, but that is a good thing.
This, and the on-line practice test from NCEES are all I used to study and I feel I was well prepared. The PPI problems help you get the knowledge of the material; while the NCEES problems give you a feel for timing, and what the exam problems are like.
The only thing that would make this more helpful for studying would be if it had difficulty or time ratings for each question. There were some areas of study I did not want to spend a lot of time on.
Don't take lots of books to the exam. All I used was the MERM (Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual) that accompanies this. It had what I needed to solve every problem except one.
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