Abstract
This very competently written volume, designed to cover “all requirements up to Higher Certificate and University Scholarships standard”, leaves one with a dream-like feeling that the Saturnian days of the old Cambridge mathematics have not yet passed away. Here are no philosophic doubts concerning the definitions of force and matter; a balance must still be (i) true, (ii) sensitive, (iii) stable, and (iv) rigid; the conventional systems of pulleys are carefully and clearly explained, with illustrative examples of every degree of ingenuity, and not so much as a picture of a Spanish Barton: and all our old problems concerning rods in bowls, jointed rhombuses, slipping ladders, sliding rings, jamming drawers, and examples of practically every type of question that the perverted imagination of an examiner can suggest, are assembled under their due headings and worked out in clear and orderly fashion. The book expands beyond the limits usually assigned to such work in well-written and fully illustrated chapters on beams and catenary problems, on graphical statics, and on virtual work.
Intermediate Mechanics.
By D. Humphrey. Vol. 2: Statics and Hydrostatics. (Longmans' Modern Series.) Pp. xi + 438. (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1931.) 10s. 6d.
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A., F. Intermediate Mechanics . Nature 128, 244 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128244b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128244b0