This is a book about the Mechanics of Solids, Statics, the Strength of Materials, and Elasticity Theory. But that doesn’t mean a thing unless you have had a course in the Mechanics of Solids, Statics, the Strength of Materials, or Elasticity Theory. I assume you have not; let us try again:

This is a book that builds upon what you were supposed to learn in your basic physics and mathematics courses last year. We will talk about forces – not political, but vector forces – about moments and torques, reactions, displacements, linear springs, and the requirements of static equilibrium of a particle or a rigid body. We will solve sets of linear algebraic equations and talk about when we can not find a unique solution to a set of linear algebraic equations. We will derive a whole raft of new equations that apply to particles, bodies, structures, and mechanisms; these will often contain the spatial derivatives of forces, moments, and displacements. You have seen a good bit of the basic stuff of this course before, but we will not assume you know the way to talk about, or work with, these concepts, principles, and methods so fundamental to our subject. So we will recast the basics in our own language, the language of engineering mechanics.