Applied Statics and Strength of Materials (5th Edition)

Fine

This book is just okay. The book has fairly good explanations of the ideas, but in the "step by step" examples, they don't always tell you what they're doing. I don't know if they're just assuming I'll catch it, but if you're trying to figure out how to do the problem, it's sometimes very hard to understand how they get what they do. My college professor doesn't like this book for that reason either, but I guess there's not much to choose from in this area...And there ARE answers to the odd numbered questions in the back of the book, which helps.

I had to purchase this book for a class and it is a great introductory book. The book is non calc based so not everything is covered but if you need to communicate with an engineer and learn engineering terminonlogy this is the book for you. Several topics are covered such as simple truss anaylsis and load distribution as well thermal effects on building materials. Material testing regulations and standards are also discussed. There are many more topics covered that can put you on track when communicating with an engineer. I am a carpenter and communicating with engineers is sometimes an everyday event. Knowing engineering basics helps tremedously.

With nearly any textbook I've ever used (I am a 20+ year college student), you could study the examples, read the text, and figure out things for yourself. That is just not true here. This book regularly uses the examples to teach AND show how to solve each problem. You MUST read all examples, our you'll very likely miss important information you should have learned.The book sometimes places diagrams in the body of the text, and other times the diagrams are in the margin. I wish they'd make up their mind on this. All that wasted margin space is unbelievable. Also, the font size of the diagrams should be larger. It's almost impossible to find the right "figure" at times, making time lost from learning to searching for misplaced captions that don't have any consistency in their placement.The last part that confuses me is the unwillingness to use the margins for all diagrams, but the publisher is perfectly happen to start a full page problem on the very last line of a page! Why do this? To save space? You've already proven you don't care about the space!Perhaps I am more sensitive to these issues than my peers; I happen to be taking a technical writing course right now. I can only laugh when I read how to do something right in that class, only to open this book and see it done wrong 10 minutes later.I have no doubt the authors know and understand the material, but there are just too many things to learn just to get 'prepared' to use the book. At the fifth edition, I would expect these issues would be worked out!To top things off, I just found out that we get to use the same book next semester too! (Insult and injury.)I realize there are a limited texts on this topic, but I'd bet almost every community college and 4 year school in the US needs one. Seems like a savvy professor somewhere would write a new text and make it available as a downloadable book. It wouldn't have to cost anywhere near $200 and could be edited to be made better in seconds whenever an issue was found.

The 6th version is way to expensive and this version is the equivalent if not better! Very little format has changed.

Not really useful for me. My teacher does not use it in class, he just give as a homework from end of the chapter. Average book, does not explain everything like I would like to see in the book for $150.

This book covers fundamental statics concepts that are required for thermodynamics, strength of materials and many other engineering concepts. I personally have a hard time understanding statics when trying to learn from this book, there is a decent amount of examples in each section but some concepts are "skipped" when explaining examples simply because the author assumes you already understand certain Algebra/geometric concepts. If you do not understand a concept or method STOP and redo the section before moving forward! you cannot skip or fail and continue learning statics well, every concept builds on the last. My biggest problem with this text book is that the rental I received was beyond damaged, and with no time to return and get a different copy (class had already started) I was forced to use a book with torn binding, missing pages and heavy abuse. I've attached pictures of the book I received from amazon rentals. I've also attached a picture of the number of times this book was rented out, I could count at least 9 stock tags.

The book itself seems to explain the subject well. At times it is a little hard to follow, have found a few errors and/or missing information typos.

nice condition.

Love it