Properties of Engineering Materials

Higgins shows how atomic structure influences material properties. The first three chapters "The Atom", "The Molecule", "The Crystal", give the best explanation I've ever read about atomic structure, as good or better than does the famous teacher Feynman. The rest of the book is a theoretical overview that goes deep enough to explain the key points of how metals, plastics, composites, and ceramics are different from one another. Most every sentence counts so read carefully. The progress is simple though and puts to shame most American texts on the subject. The math is minimal and included mainly to support the theory in the text. After reading the text you will have a overview of the key information necessary to use various materials. A truly great book. It is no wonder that professional auto racing such as Formula 1 and even the making of most top race cars for American open wheel racing such as for IRL and CART is done in England where the author Higgins lives. It is a true shame that in American colleges books like this which do such a fine job of explaining basic concepts are usually passed by in favor of books giving mathematical spaghetti that explains poorly due to not explaining the individual steps of the math. Thank you Higgins for one of the greatest books I've read on engineering.