Reddit reviews Why Things Break: Understanding the World By the Way It Comes Apart
We found 6 Reddit comments about Why Things Break: Understanding the World By the Way It Comes Apart. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Three Rivers Press CA
A really good book about the application of these concepts in the development of new technology and tools is Why Things Break by Mark Eberhart. It provides some easy-to-understand explanations and recounts some really fun stories about actual product development (e.g., Corelle).
I enjoyed "why things break" by Mark Eberhart. It's about the development of materials science.
Actually, before getting a textbook, you might wanna read Why Things Break first.
Well the best answer is definitely what Tigrinus posted. To add my two cents here are a couple of books I've read that are super interesting, without being textbooks:
The essential engineer
Why things break
Machinery's handbook
Machinery's handbook is pretty much the bible for Mechanical Engineers. It covers everything from materials sciences to types of measurements to machining and component sizing.
Materials can either be Strong, Hard, or Tough, but not usually all three.
When materials are hard they are not very tough. (Glass can cut leather but is easy to break. Ceramic knives also hold a very hard edge but are brittle).
If bullets were hard, they would shatter when fired, so they have to be tough. (We used to use lead for bullets because you can hit lead with a hammer and not shatter it- it only deforms. Not true for high strength steel.)
So to defeat a very tough bullet coming at you very fast, they can't use something tough. (A lead armor plate getting hit by a lead bullet would just deform like getting hit with a hammer, doing damage to you anyway.)
To defeat something tough, they use something hard. The ceramic plate doesn't deform much (hard) but does deform the relatively soft bullet, and aborb the energy into shattering itself, not into your body, thus protecting you.
Source: a chapter from a great book on materials science: "Why Things Break": https://www.amazon.com/Why-Things-Break-Understanding-World/dp/1400048834
Best answer I can give is a chapter from this. I can't find my copy now though: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Things-Break-Understanding-World/dp/1400048834