Mechanics: Statics & Dynamics Problem Solver

This is an excellent book replete with simple engineeringdiagrams depicting distributed loads, the analysis of shear,centroids, inertia, particle kinetics, Newtonian gravitation,rigid body kinetics, torque , forced vibration and otherengineering topics . The presentation is clear with manydiagrams and numerical examples depicting the most advancedconcepts.This book covers the Newtonian laws, specialized distributed loads/beams, concepts of inertia, elastic and inelasticcollisions, torque, rigid body kinetics, angular momentum,matrix algebraic applications and advanced topics in vibrationanalysis. The presentation is replete with simple diagramsand easy-to-read explanations. For instance, in forced vibrations, the author begins with the simple equations ofmotion, differentiation of these equations and a step-by-steppresentation until the roots have been derived. At the end, he presents graphs depicting in phase and out-of-phase motion.This step-by-step analysis helps students understand the theorybehind the formula presentations. This is helpful for theEIT exam because candidates require an analytic and intuitiveknowledge of this subject matter.

This and the 1995 similar book by Fogel are full of a wealth of worked out problems and should be a must for physics and engineering students. Many of the problems resemble non-worked-out problems in textbooks, so students can learn methods applicable to their own school texts. Sometimes problems of the same category are scattered in different chapters, so be sure to consult the index under many variations of the same theme and different words in the same topic. The usual cautions about putting the essence of the problems on flash cards need to be made (not more than 2 ordinary handwritten lines on front and back of a 3x5 card, etc.), and the student should not use this book before learning exactly what the theorems and definitions say (also to be put on flash cards and learned before doing the problems), since there is almost no way to remember or even recognize the profusion of problems for an examination without some organization, condensation, summarization, and learning of the basic ideas behind them.