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lecture notes

Mechanical Properties of Thin Films (class notes for a graduate class at Stanford University)

Submitted by William D. Nix on
education
lecture notes
Thin Film Mechanical Properties

The attached file is a set of class notes developed by W.D. Nix of Stanford University and used in a graduate course on Mechanical Properties of Thin Films. These notes have been used in the graduate course MSE 353 since the late 1980's. That course has been taught every year or so since that time. The notes were last updated in January of 2005. The reader will see a note to the effect that many of the figures and illustrations in the file have been taken from the work of students and colleagues at Stanford without proper attribution.

Are notes and textbooks a higher priority than journal clubs?

Submitted by Roberto Ballarini on
opinion
textbooks
lecture notes

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).

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