Essential Mechanics - Statics and Strength of Materials with MATLAB and Octave

Reviewed by Michael Pastor, Assistant Professor, Tidewater Community College on 1/19/24

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This text has a comprehensive table of contents. However, no glossary of terms or index is present. I also had trouble finding reference tables or charts detailing properties of common geometries. There are example problems with solutions through the text some are simple MATLAB programs. Finally, this OER suffers the typical drawback for an engineering text and that is lack of practice problems. The lack of an index is a bit of a problem.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

I did not notice any inaccuracies.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The book includes MATLAB program scripts. I copied and attempted to run one of these programs (relating to stresses in Trusses). There was a small simple bug relating to a missing remark, but otherwise the code functioned perfectly. The code is not documented well, however. This reference may have use helping an instructor setup MATLAB assignments for their classes.

Clarity rating: 4

The language is a sometimes awkward in the text. There are still a number missing words and syntax errors.

Consistency rating: 5

I found the terms used to be consistent with common terminology in the field of mechanics.

Modularity rating: 5

The book can serve as a stand alone Statics text, a Stand alone Mechanics of Materials text, and/or as a combined text. The organization of the book is such that it is not to difficult to determine particular chapters and chapter sections to cherry pick for teaching.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

Yes, for the most part the topics follow a logical fashion. However, chapters associated with Statics and Mechanics of materials are interspersed. That is, all topics of Statics are not covered before starting Mechanics of Materials, but rather both are interspersed. For the most part chapters either refer to Statics or Mechanics of Materials though.

Interface rating: 4

Yes, but everything is left justified including example problems and images.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

There is some grammatical awkwardness from time to time.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

No insensitivity noticed

Comments

I think this is an interesting text book. I think someone who is attempting to review or learn Statics and Strength of Materials at one time might find this text very useful. I also think the MATLAB examples can inspire and help instructors create similar examples. I will download this text for further review.