Mechanics

A wonderful refresher and self-teach text

I took a course on vector statics in undergrad, and foolishly I sold my textbook back to the bookstore. I later found myself wanting a refresher and so I purchased this book. It has proven an incredible resource. The pedagogical approach is highly visual and geometric. A slip through the book will reveal that there is at least one diagram per page, all heavily labeled, and all physical arguments throughout the text are based on the geometric properties of the diagrams. As some have commented, this is kind of archaic (for instance, calling a force going from a point A to a point B as AB), but fantastically approachable. Also fully explored are the classical, graphical methods of solutions, while the the text of course develops the modern algebraic technique. While packed full of diagrams, the text is also packed full of problems which are the only way to learn a subject like this. Almost the last 100 pages of the book are problems with solutions listed in the back. Plenty of examples and illustrations are given in the text as well, often in the form of simplified and idealized versions of real-world mechanisms. When I purchased the book, it was $15.95, compared to the $170 you'd spend on a modern textbook in statics and mechanics, and nothing new has happened in mechanics since Newton. I would highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to learn the subject themselves (understanding that they'd need actually do the exercises) on their own time. I'm not a professor, but I feel like I could easily have used this book as an undergraduate in an intro statics class as the main text and still gotten the same information as from my $170 book, assuming the same regime of homework problems. A definite recommend. Read more