Abstract
This text-book on civil engineering is especially intended for the use of cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, whose duties later are often those of a civil engineer. A short course on this subject is therefore provided, and this work is evidently based on the author's lectures at West Point. It is natural to expect that in these circumstances the treatment of the theory of structures will be that of the engineer rather than of the pure mathematician, and that it will be of the simplest possible character. It is therefore disappointing to find that this section is treated in an almost purely academic way involving much chasing of x, with little or no appeal to physical ideas. This is well illustrated by chapters iv. and v., mainly on the deflections of beams under various conditions of loading and fixing, a section of forty-nine pages, involving one hundred and ninety-three numbered equations, with little or no indication of their physical meaning. A semigraphical treatment would have been far preferable for military cadets studying this subject with a view to practical applications, and this remark applies to other parts of the book; thus we should imagine that a student, after reading chapter iii., on the fiexure and bending of beams, would have considerable difficulty in calculating the moment of resistance of a section such as a bridge rail, a perfectly easy problem by a semi-graphical method and one likely to require solution by an officer who “in an isolated station finds himself called upon to act as an engineer and constructor of buildings, roads, and bridges,” with possibly a miscellaneous collection of materials.
Civil Engineering: A Text-book for a Short Course.
By Lieut.—Col. G. J. Fiebeger, U.S. Army. Pp. xiii + 573. (New York: Wiley and Sons; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd.) Price 21s. net.
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C., E. Civil Engineering: A Text-book for a Short Course . Nature 73, 196 (1905). https://doi.org/10.1038/073196a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/073196a0