MERM

Ya know the more I study, and the more review courses I go to, the more I realize the MERM really sucks as a PE prep book and as an ME reference book. I know it's our only choice for a book that has everything in one cover but Lindeburg does a poor job with this book. Does anyone agree? The HVAC portion is just really lacking and could be much improved. The Machine Design/Mechanical Systems section is way out of wack....the order in which he presents things are all jumbled up. ie. shouldn't torsional stress come before combined stresses and not 2 chapters later. Why have a 1 page chapter on properties of solids bodies, ya know. His end-of the-chapter problems are not that great and some chapters do not have enough problems...ie. he only has 4 problems at the end of the failure theory chapter.

Of course I will continue to use it since it does have everything in one cover but I wish we had other options. All in all I wouldn't give this book a C-.

Oh well, I just thought I would vent for a minute, lol!

you make good points. but as you mentioned... what other choice do we have?

I think half the trick of the test is learning how to use MERM... then it is usefull as a general reference, until you forget how to use it. I pulled it off my shelf the other day for the first time in a long time, it took me forever to find a simple equation. not intuitive at all.

and the appendix sucks

I agree, I hated the MERM when I was studying. You would see a problem in say chapter 23, but you wouldnt learn the equation for that problem until chapter 28! Bogus...

But alas, what can you do?

I realize I'm getting a late start, but I'm just getting into the MERM (12th ed.) and I don't see any end of chapter problems. Am I missing something? I see example problems included in the text with solutions if that is what you are referring to, but no actual end of chapter problems..... For example, in the Failure Theories chapter that Joey mentioned, I have 5 example problems, but nothing else which doesn't seem to match up since he said he had 4 problems.....

I'm also using the 12th edition but we say end-of-the-chapter problems because up until the 12th edition the end-of-the-chapter problems were included in the MERM. Now (starting with the 12th ed) those problems are in a seperate book. See link below...

http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Problems-Me...9444&sr=8-1

In this book he has problems associated with each chapter. He only has 4 problems to go with the failure theory chapter. So I was using old terminology. Sorry to confuse you.

Phew, I was really starting to worry.... Thanks for the quick reply, I'll have to pick that up.

JoeysVee said:

Ya know the more I study, and the more review courses I go to, the more I realize the MERM really sucks as a PE prep book and as an ME reference book. I know it's our only choice for a book that has everything in one cover but Lindeburg does a poor job with this book. Does anyone agree? The HVAC portion is just really lacking and could be much improved. The Machine Design/Mechanical Systems section is way out of wack....the order in which he presents things are all jumbled up. ie. shouldn't torsional stress come before combined stresses and not 2 chapters later. Why have a 1 page chapter on properties of solids bodies, ya know. His end-of the-chapter problems are not that great and some chapters do not have enough problems...ie. he only has 4 problems at the end of the failure theory chapter.
Of course I will continue to use it since it does have everything in one cover but I wish we had other options. All in all I wouldn't give this book a C-.

Oh well, I just thought I would vent for a minute, lol!

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I agree. The MERM is out of date for the current exam. The content is in line with the old format and the practice problems are also more suited for the old essay type exam format. The Machine Design section simply sucks. There is also a lot of fluff that's not needed for the PE. It's time Lindeburg or someone else came up with a more upto date reference for the PE.

Having said that I agree with the other posters that it is the best out of current references out in the market. I sure hope that someone comes up with a more upto date reference.

The MERM is what you make of it. I found it to be the resource for over 90% of my exam problems. If you think it sucks, find different references. If you're wise, you'll learn how to use the MERM and only use three or maybe four total references during the exam. I used only three total and passed. To each his own.

I actually found the MERM to be a helluva good reference book. yeah, you can get more in depth texts devoted solely to the area you are covering, but for the exam and general everyday stuff, the MERM is pretty impressive.

I do agree that the HVAC portion sucks. But alot of the HVAC info is in other chapters so he would have been repeating it to make the section larger. I took HVAC depth and used MERM and ASHRAE exclusively (and passed) so i cant beat up on old lindburg too much!!

Capt Worley PE said:

I actually found the MERM to be a helluva good reference book. yeah, you can get more in depth texts devoted solely to the area you are covering, but for the exam and general everyday stuff, the MERM is pretty impressive.

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I agree with you on the depth and breadth of the book... it is the organization that I am less than pleased with... I realize that a book that covers so many topics will never have perfect order or flow, but for me the information is not presented in a logical order. Once I learned it, I was able to use it very effectively on the exam. But most of my study time was devoted to learning MERM (not the information in it).

The MERM is a good book but is lacking in organization and content in some areas like bearings. From an organization standpoint the book is like many text books and is progressive in that he expands on topics in latter chapters which can get confusing for a reference book. This is why I developed my own reference for the book which took allot of time and is now 14 pages. Once you know the book well you will know when you will need your other references which should only be a few depending on your depth but for machine design it will be, Shigley, Machinery Handbook, Marks, and a real good conversions book for those SI to US conversions that are now included in the exam.

I think it is a good reference book, but not a good study manual.

I took a review course at a local University for the PE and they gave me better "study" material, and I used the MERM for what it is intended for.....reference.

You can study it, but you see the inherent problems with doing so.

To complain about the book is like complaining about the wheel. How else could you do it?

The way I look at it, we are lucky someone put together a book like this. How else or why else would have HVAC topics in a book with vibrations or economics?

I think it is imperative that you get the sample questions and solutions from NCEES. Try to go through these a couple times, maybe early on in the studying process and then a couple weeks before the exam.

I got this 3 weeks before the exam and I think it is why I passed. The sample questions were harder and I was well prepared.

djshortsleeve said:

To complain about the book is like complaining about the wheel. How else could you do it?
The way I look at it, we are lucky someone put together a book like this. How else or why else would have HVAC topics in a book with vibrations or economics?

I think it is imperative that you get the sample questions and solutions from NCEES. Try to go through these a couple times, maybe early on in the studying process and then a couple weeks before the exam.

I got this 3 weeks before the exam and I think it is why I passed. The sample questions were harder and I was well prepared.

Click to expand...

I completely agree, the NCEES Sample Questions are imperative to your success. I only went thru them once, but if I had done so a couple of times I would have been much better off on the test.

Yeah the problems book is important but the subject here is how the MERM sucks. And most of us agree it sucks in many ways but since it is the only book we have it is the best way to study.

I agree with Capt Worley. It may not be great at being in depth in all the subjects, but it does a fine job for the breadth (morning) session. Yeah some material seems scattered about, that is why it is important to tab the bloody thing to find your stuff fast. As far as afternoon goes, that is where the supplemental texts come in to play. For me doing Machine Design, I used exclusively Shigley and the Machinery Handbook. Like Cap'n said, three books are really all you need. 'Course I brought the units conversion book too. Actually I brought a bunch of ****, but only used the above mentioned.

I am getting really sick of looking at the MERM. It is really frustrating in some areas. For example, the area that covers columns sucks. I had to re-read the subject in the machinery handbook then I went to Shigley to figure out why the MERM was confusing me. Shigley explained it very clearly unfortunately the formulas in MERM are somewhat different, i.e. different symbolgy, etc. Lindeburg has formulas in example problems that are not in the chapters ect. I have markups through out the MERM and references to other references to remind me where to go when working the problems. I know it is hard to cram everything into one book but the information needs to be clear as we do not have hours to find the information during the exam.

And he changes symbols from each chapter. ie Qdot is btu/hr in one chapter and in the next chapter it's qdot.