Flow-Induced Vibrations: An Engineering Guide Book

This is one of the most interesting books I have read in a long time.

It is definitely a science book (specifically, it is about "fracture mechanics" according to the Library of Congress cataloging data and about "molecular physics" according to the ISBN box on the back cover). However, if all of the science books and classes I took in high school presented their information like the author does in this book, I would have found those subjects a lot more interesting.

I will be re-reading this again soon, and adding more to this review as I do that. But briefly, here is what I liked about this book so much:

1) The author includes autobiographical and historical examples in the text along with scientific explanations and examples for the topics he is covering. Being a big history/biography guy, I found the book fairly easy reading knowing that the author would be tying the theoretical science (which I often couldn't understand very well) back into real life.

2) The book is written pretty much as an autobiography, and thus was generally easy to follow. The author starts with his interest as a kid as to why his marbles broke under certain conditions. From there he describes various experiments with the marbles and other items to see how those things broke, and under what conditions. I especially enjoyed his early chapter about his efforts to figure out to destroy the supposedly unbreakable Corelle dinnerware (as soon as he finds some in a Goodwill store, he buys it, then takes it home and immediately starts figuring out to destroy it. Cool!) The author goes on to do undergrad work at the University of COlorado at Boulder, grad work at MIT, and then on to a first job at the Los Alamos National Laboratories. He is currently an instructor at the Colorado School of Mines. Throughout the book, the author's enthusiasm for the people and places he works at is apparent and fun to read about, even as he pursues specific and detailed answers to the question that has always inspired him: Why do things break?

3) Throughout the book, the author points out some serious challenges to how we do scientific research in the country. These brief passages read like the current events books that describe all of the detailed problems of a specific issue in society. However, I found these parts to be very interesting and thought-provoking, in that the specific issues he raises had never occurred to me. The best example of this is his discussion as to why his area of research, "fracture mechanics," is an important yet neglected area of science. The author claims that most researchers working on aspects of this problem over the last hundred years or so are seeking predictions as to WHEN things will likely break, and under what conditions. this is a very different question as to WHY they break. The answers to the first question are concerned with minimizing the effects of eventual structural failure, but the author in trying to answer the second question may be able to someday identify better materials and design methods so that the things we use every day are less likely to fail as frequently as they do.

As I said at the start of this review, I want to elaborate on much more about this great book after I re-read it and take some notes. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in any area of science, technology, and general non-fiction. It's a fun read.