Resources for Engineering Statics? (1st year course)

[ShangMing]

Hi PF members.

I'm a first year engineering student, and recently got my midterms back and was highly disappointed with the statics mark, 55% compared to the class average of 23.8/40, SD 9.1.

I did a very large amount of practice from Hibbeler's Statics textbook, 12e, but it seemed that the exam questions were on a far greater level of difficulty. I had absolutely no experience with such problems, so not only did I not have enough time on the exam, I made silly mistakes that if I hadn't, it would've put me to at least 75% on the exam. (4 questions, 10 marks each, completely missed the first question but missed marks on the next three due to silly mistakes)

What I'm looking for are good sources which have explanations, examples, and challenging questions. For the final exam, I have only 2 previous year's exams with solutions, so once I exhaust those, I basically have nowhere to go. I need as much practice as possible since even if I get 100% on the final, that'd probably put me at a B+ (perhaps higher, but I have no idea how gpa works still).

Exams from other universities with solutions would be a great help as well (I attend University of Alberta).

Also, study tips? I currently study from the textbook assigned to the course, and problems from other textbooks I've downloaded. On the midterm though, ~50 people (out of 795) got 95%+ which completely blew me away--how did they do it??

Thanks PF.

 

[madmike159]

Ask them what they did. Its very hard to say a good book without knowing how you learn and what you do in your course.
I often find going to the library and looking in books there to find a good one can work. If you find a really good one that you understand then you can get your own copy. Also books are often given reviews on amazon by buyers.

 

[dangish]

do you go to MUN?

 

[AlephZero]

I agree with MadMike, find out where the students with top marks got their study problems. Ask your lecturer if the students won't tell you!

Another possible explanation is that you are trying to learn how to do "standard types of problems", rather than learning the general principles (free body diagrams, resolving forces and moments, virtual work, etc) and how to apply them to ANY problem that is thrown at you.

 

[ShangMing]

Thanks for the replies, unfortunately I decided on dropping the course to retake it next semester. (-0.2 overall GPA load adjustment for second year admissions, but I'm not too worried about not getting into the program I want.)

@Dangish, I go to University of Alberta, why do you ask?

Also, I only know a small group of people in first year, especially since in my residence floor, there's only one other engineering student, so not much interaction going on between the other engineers and myself. Everyone who I DO know got within 1 standard deviation of the mean.

@Alephzero, yeah I really do need to understand the general concepts a lot better, part of why I dropped the course. I spent an entire long weekend (4 days) trying to understand shear and moment diagrams, but I realized that I didn't understand some fundamentals like method of sections and a large part of trusses, so if I did continue the course and then dynamics next semester, I was pretty much screwed. Also the time I spent during that long weekend was wasted since I didn't get anything done, so it was definitely affecting my other courses. I will be prestudying for statics during the winter break, hopefully going to pull off an A this time around.

 

[justiny]

Hey ShangMing, I'm new to PF and trolling around the forums I find a fellow Albertan!

I go to Medicine Hat College, the engineering program here is done through U of A so we do similar courses. For statics we used Vector Mechanics for Engineers Statics by Ferdinand Beer, at first I found the book pretty thick but after you get used to the presentation it helped a lot just reading the book; I've picked up things I missed in class or the teacher forgot to mention, plus there a quite a few worked out examples, the worlds supply of problems and I believe you can find a solution manual online.

As for tips, it may sound obvious but I found that taking the time to draw out a nicely detailed and labeled free body diagram went a long way on tough exam questions. Besides that, do as many questions as you can on your own.

An amazon link for that textbook
http://www.amazon.com/dp/007127359X/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[Inertigratus]

I'm also studying statics and my book really isn't good at intuitively and pedagogically explaining concepts and approaches to problem solving, would appeciate if anyone of you know some good resources to check out on the internet.

 

[ShangMing]

Haha I thought this thread died a long time ago.

But I'm retaking statics this semester, and have not gotten any additional resources. I do have a different professor, however, who is far far far better than the previous one. The previous prof spent literally 5 minutes out of an 80 minute class to explain concepts and then 75 minutes on examples, whether the class understood or not. This one spends ~30 minutes or more on concepts, explaining strategies to do problems and everything. Honestly did not think that the professor could make such a difference.

I don't think I'll be getting any more books for this, since I managed to find the instructor's solution manual for the book I'm using online, and have a far better study schedule than last term, so I'm basically working through every single problem in the book (100+ per chapter).

I've also learned to use the prof's office hours and TA's help a lot more. Hopefully will get that 4.0 this semester.