Mechanics of Fluids

This book is great, just like his other books. My advantage was that Dr. Shames actually taught this class when I took it. The book is very useful in preparing the undergrad for fluids and aerospace engineering fields with good explanations of important theory. The examples are simple because the theory is hard. This book is NOT a cook book plug and chug type of formula book for fluids.

This book is certainly not intended for undergraduate. But this is a great book if you are a graduate pursuing deeper study in fluid mechanics. To bridge the gap it would be best for undergrad to read other 'introduction to fluid mechanics' book first. And continue to this book after you had a strong background in vector-matrix & tensor analysis. To my opinion i think the fluid static part is still suitable for undergrad - especially the buoyancy part, but its fluid dynamics analysis is far too advanced for undergrad and they should find better understanding in other introductory books.

There is no doubt that Fluid Dynamics is possibly the hardest subject in Mechanical Engineering. The reason, almost all situations in Fluids are non-linear. It is important, for undergrads to realize that this book is not intended for an introductory Fluids class. notice that the title is not "Introduction to Fluid Mechanics", this is a graduate level book! If you are using this book for an intro level fluids book than your professor either has no taste or he is trying to push you to be ready for a graduate level course in Fluid mechanics. Specifically, the author does a great job developing the governing differential equations. In particular the Navier-Stokes Equations. He not only describes how the equation comes about, but he also describes how to take this non-linear, non-homogenous, partial differntial equation with 3 equations (4 unknowns) and simplify it to solve real world problems. For those of you griping about how bad this book is, I suggest you look at "Introduction to Fluid Mechanics" by Fox and McDonald. This book is excellent for the novice, then move up to a "real" Fluids book.