Mechanics of Fluids

Rating:
Summary: for undergrad students , beware ! this book is not for you
Review: There is no doubt that Fluid Dynamics is possibly the hardest subject in Mechanical Engineering. The reason, almost all situations in Fluids are non-linear. It is important, for undergrads to realize that this book is not intended for an introductory Fluids class. notice that the title is not "Introduction to Fluid Mechanics", this is a graduate level book! If you are using this book for an intro level fluids book than your professor either has no taste or he is trying to push you to be ready for a graduate level course in Fluid mechanics. Specifically, the author does a great job developing the governing differential equations. In particular the Navier-Stokes Equations. He not only describes how the equation comes about, but he also describes how to take this non-linear, non-homogenous, partial differntial equation with 3 equations (4 unknowns) and simplify it to solve real world problems. For those of you griping about how bad this book is, I suggest you look at "Introduction to Fluid Mechanics" by Fox and McDonald. This book is excellent for the novice, then move up to a "real" Fluids book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Fluids Theory
Review: There is no doubt that Fluid Dynamics is possibly the hardest subject in Mechanical Engineering. The reason, almost all situations in Fluids are non-linear. It is important, for undergrads to realize that this book is not intended for an introductory Fluids class. notice that the title is not "Introduction to Fluid Mechanics", this is a graduate level book! If you are using this book for an intro level fluids book than your professor either has no taste or he is trying to push you to be ready for a graduate level course in Fluid mechanics. Specifically, the author does a great job developing the governing differential equations. In particular the Navier-Stokes Equations. He not only describes how the equation comes about, but he also describes how to take this non-linear, non-homogenous, partial differntial equation with 3 equations (4 unknowns) and simplify it to solve real world problems. For those of you griping about how bad this book is, I suggest you look at "Introduction to Fluid Mechanics" by Fox and McDonald. This book is excellent for the novice, then move up to a "real" Fluids book.

Rating:
Summary: for undergrad students , beware ! this book is not for you
Review: This book is certainly not intended for undergraduate. But this is a great book if you are a graduate pursuing deeper study in fluid mechanics. To bridge the gap it would be best for undergrad to read other 'introduction to fluid mechanics' book first. And continue to this book after you had a strong background in vector-matrix & tensor analysis. To my opinion i think the fluid static part is still suitable for undergrad - especially the buoyancy part, but its fluid dynamics analysis is far too advanced for undergrad and they should find better understanding in other introductory books.

Rating:
Summary: Shames' text truely shameful
Review: This book provides more confusion and frustration to a student than anything. It ceases to offer sufficient example problems, while the few problems that do exist pertain to the less important theory. Also, the text provides a lack of explaination as to where it gets its values for constants - nearly all chapter problems require the utilization of some type of constant, yet the book has no tables of these values. I actually had to refer to my thermodynamics text in order to finish the questions from this book. It almost seems as if the book was rushed, since it doesn't explain or justify anything. Finally, I would like to mention that this was the most expensive of all my texts. I regret purchasing this text, as I could have learned more about fluid mechanics in my bathtub than from this book.