Preface

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Preface Preface

Engineering Statics is a free, open-source textbook appropriate for anyone who wishes to learn more about vectors, forces, moments, static equilibrium, and the properties of shapes. Specifically, it has been written to be the textbook for Engineering Mechanics: Statics, the first course in the Engineering Mechanics series offered in most university-level engineering programs.

This book’s content should prepare you for subsequent classes covering Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics and Mechanics of Materials. At its core, Engineering Statics provides the tools to solve static equilibrium problems for rigid bodies. The additional topics of resolving internal loads in rigid bodies and computing area moments of inertia are also included as stepping stones for later courses. We have endeavored to write in an approachable style and provide many questions, examples, and interactives for you to engage with and learn from.

Feedback.

Please contact our team with feedback and suggestions that can be provided directly to the lead author Dan Baker via email at dan.baker@colostate.edu, or through the Engineering Statics Google Group. We would also appreciate knowing if you are using the book for teaching purposes. There are currently no instructor resources available beyond the textbook itself.

Access.

The entire book is available for free as an interactive online ebook at https://engineeringstatics.org. This should work well on all screen sizes, including smartphones. A free PDF version, suitable for reading on a tablet or computer, is available for offline use at https://engineeringstatics.org/pdf/statics.pdf. The PDF is searchable and easy to navigate using embedded links. The source files for this book are available on GitHub at https://github.com/dantheboatman/EngineeringStatics.

History.

This book began as the vision of a handful of the authors to create a book filled with interactives instead of static figures. Spurred into action by funding opportunities in the Fall of 2018, the team worked on the book through 2019 and launched this working draft version in Fall 2020. Over the two years of creating the book, our team grew to a coast-to-coast representation of large public universities, small private colleges, and community colleges.

License.

Engineering Statics by Daniel Baker et al. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You are free to download, use, and print this work as you wish as long as your use is not primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation. You can also modify the text as much as you like (for example to create a custom edition for your students), as long as you attribute the parts of the book you use to the authors. All the GeoGebra content found in the book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License with more detailed information found at https://www.geogebra.org/license Content in chapters 1-7 and 9-10 of Engineering Statics was adapted with permission from Jacob Moore’s Mechanics Map - Open Textbook Project http://mechanicsmap.psu.edu/.

On the Cover.

A photo by Artur Westergren from Yerba Buena Island across the San Francisco bridge of the San Francisco, California skyline. Image source: https://unsplash.com/photos/Rx92z9dU-mA