Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60795 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

From the Publisher
This book is written primarily as a companion to the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual, but is also useful as a stand-alone book providing extra practice solving problems.

About the Author
Michael R. Lindeburg, PE, is recognized among the engineering community as the leading authority on professional engineering licensing exam preparation. The author of many books on this subject, he has taught and supervised exam-review courses for over 25 years. He holds BS and MS degrees from Stanford University in industrial engineering. When not writing, he can be found hosting the "Licensing Exam Forum," an online bulletin board for FE and PE candidates.

Customer Reviews

Solutions Manual!
For anyone looking for extra problems to work in preparation for the PE exam, take note: this book does *not* provide practice problems. It is a solutions manual for Lindeburg's Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual (look at the larger view of the cover and note the blurb in the upper left corner). It was previously published as the "Solutions Manual for the Mechanical Engineering Reference Manual" -- which I bought last summer along with the reference manual in hopes of taking the test last fall.

I'd rate the book 4 stars if I weren't annoyed at buying it in hopes of having more exam-grade problems to work. The practice problems in the reference manual aren't (IMHO) as good practice as the problems in a book like "101 Solved Mechanical Engineering Problems." The solutions are useful, but the title is inaccurate.

New edition contains practice problems
If you bought the reference book, buy this book. I know it's spendy, but do it. The 12th edition contains several great exam grade problems that anyone taking the PE exam should take time to work beforehand. I worked about 1/2 of the problems in this book, and felt well prepared for the exam. I was hoping the exam problems would be easier, but about half were about the same as the problems in this book (the other half were easier).

My frustrations were that the 12th edition still contains errors, and no errata was published when I bought this book, most were simple and straight forward, but some were frustrating.

The practice problems contain some problems that require references or ideas that are not contained in the reference book (see the problems in chapter 19, fluid power, and note that the book does not contain any methods for calculating hydraulic impedence)... there are only maybe 4 problems like this in the book, so it's not a big deal.

Also, I don't know why the author labeled many problems (1 hour limit)... some were very easy (like 2 minute problems), while other problems that weren't labeled (1 hour limit) took quite a while to compute. It'd be nicer if they were labeled (easy, med, hard) or something of that nature to make studying easier, so you could work all the problems in the area you want to emphasize in, while just doing the 'easy' ones in other areas.

Things to know before purchasing this manual and sample exam
The practice problems are all written in SI and English units yet there will only be in English units on the Mechanical PE exam. All problems have both units, however if you are interested in becoming proficient with conversions this may actually distract you. This could be confusing to someone studying and trying to improve the ability to work in different systems.

Be particularly aware of the sample exam. The following quote is an excerpt from a forum on the exam which I just read. I am dissapointed to read that the Sample exam is not reflective of the actual PE exam. I too just bought this for the purpose of taking a timed practice exam but now will send it back and find a more appropriate practice exam.

"I was going to take the PPI ME sample exam under timed conditions but thank goodness I flipped through it first. As soon as I saw the SI units I knew it wouldn't be representative of the NCEES exam, at least in that regard. I saw it as being pointless working problems in the SI system since they won't be on the real exam and all my studying has been in the English system."