I registered for iMechanica a few days ago, and found many postings instructive. Here is my first blog entry.

The topics being studied today by mechanicians are very difficult (what I often call "dirty problems"). In fact, often the mechanical theories (actually coupled mechanics, biology, chemistry) required to gain improved understanding are still in their infancy. Mechanicians that have entered fields such as mechanics of biological structures have gotten up to speed by paying the price (hopefully an enjoyable time on a learning curve) of reading large numbers of papers and discipline-based books. Many of these papers are cryptic and, while they may be of high scientific quality, they do not have significant pedagogical value to those entering the field (graduate students for example).

I believe that a great contribution can be made by mechanicians that have achieved a good level of understanding of these difficult topics if they took the time to publish classroom notes and textbooks that could be used to educate the next generation graduate (and undergraduate) students. We cannot possibly keep up with the journal literature, and we should not develop a system that filters the literature (Oprah's book club does this for books, and I think it is unhealthy). Zhigang has already started making such a contribution by graciously posting his classroom notes, where he presents his own (time consuming) discovery and his own internalization of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. I would love to see these types of notes (and at some point texts) on all of the modern topics, including molecular dynamics (I have not yet read a paper on this topic that presents sufficient detail of the models).

I will thoroughly enjoy your feedback.