Recent content by Jtiger

Agreed. Usually a type of truss problem is on the exam and shear and moment diagrams. They are pretty straight forward but that is my opinion since it's one of my stronger subjects.

Good point. I have a ton of OLD text books from the 40's and 50's on structural mechanics and geotechnical and it is all still relevant today. You can buy them for next to nothing on the internet when an old professor dies and his library is sold. One of our geotech professors died and all...

My wife is a Notary and in TN they no longer recognize the embossed one. Also, if you get one with an expiration date you have to get a new one when you renew. With notary you have a "my commission expires X/X/XX" line. I've never seen an embosser in the last few years for PE's in TN. In...

It's not PDF but you can check one out from a library if you are near a university or try to check it out and have it shipped to you, I don't know if you can do it but it's worth checking into. When I was looking to buy one they were pretty expensive for using only on one or two questions...

To be honest I never looked for a conversion in the CERM. A co-worked turned me on to this book and I used it like mad in the morning. You could probably write a cheat sheet for the common conversions and keep it handy.

Just got my wall certificate and wallet card in the mail yesterday. I think I'll actually spend money on having it framed this time. I bought cheap OfficeDepot frames for my diplomas, but this is a little different. I'll wait for the other certificate that's portrait and frame them at the...

It was very in depth compared to what was on the exam IMHO. If you remember basic strength of materials and statics, you should be okay.

No, concentrate your efforts to the depth section of the Geotech rather than the others. If you can do the Six Minute Solutions AM questions for the other disciplines you will be MORE than prepared for the AM section of the Exam. I would suggest doing the PM questions 2-3 times to really get...

I agree. When I took the structural PM the first time, before I wised up and took GEO, there were one or two indeterminate beam problems. They were fairly simple analysis. Look in your structural mechanics book or your AISC steel manual for common cases. Superposition is your friend on these.

I agree. I used these three for my Geo PM and passed. I mostly used the DAS texts but used Bowles for 1 or 2 problems that needed a bit more detail.

Right, if you study with them that should familiarize you with them to do well in the Geotech PM.

I like that one but the books I used the most were by: Braja Das Principles of Geotechnical Engineering (fifth edition) Braja Das Principles of Foundation Engineering ( I don't remember the edition) Pretty much any edition will do, this stuff hasn't changed much. Google these texts and...

Very good point. It seems other engineers from foreign countries want to boost their own ego. I knew many international students that failed out of grad school when I was there.

That's not a bad idea. The way I described worked for me. It's a little unnerving to spend around 20 minutes just reading questions but it worked out on the second go around. Really there are several ways to get it done and whatever works for you is the hard to process to find without taking...

I approached from a confidence viewpoint. Start both AM and PM by reading over ALL questions and ranking them from 1 to 4 1 = I know how to do this in my sleep 2 = I know how to do this but I need my resources 3 = I think I can figure this out 4 = I have no clue Do the 1's first, then the...