Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

From Forces to Failure — and Everything In Between

In Statics, you learned how structures stand still.
In Strength of Materials, you will learn how they survive.

This course marks the transition from solving for equilibrium to understanding how real materials behave under load — how they stretch, bend, twist, deflect, and sometimes fail. You will begin to see beams not as lines on a page, but as systems storing energy, redistributing stress, and responding to the laws of mechanics.

The textbook is not required, but it is strongly recommended as a reference and source of additional practice problems. Any edition 8th edition or later will serve you well.

This is a problem-solving course. The more examples you wrestle with, the stronger your intuition will become.

The class is delivered in a synchronous remote format.

You are expected — though not strictly required — to be available during the scheduled class period. This is when live questions, guided derivations, and deeper conceptual discussions will occur. All lectures will be recorded and posted to D2L for review.

There are three required attendance days:

• First day of class

• Midterm examination

• Final examination

Everything else is designed to give you flexibility while still maintaining structure.

A Homework Log is required and will count toward your grade.

Suggested problems will be provided to guide your practice. You do not need to complete every problem — but you do need to engage consistently. Strength of Materials is cumulative. Each concept builds on the last. Regular practice transforms stress–strain relationships from abstract equations into tools you can wield confidently.

The homework log is not about busywork. It is about developing engineering judgment.

Your grade is based on:

• Homework Log submission

• Midterm examination

• Final examination

By the end of this course, you should be able to look at a structural member and reason:

Where are the maximum stresses?
How much will it deflect?
What is the margin of safety?
Is it overdesigned… or on the verge of failure?

This is the course where mechanics becomes real.

If you have any questions, please contact the Instructor, William "Ike" Eisenhauer (william.eisenhauer@pcc.edu).  Thank you.

• D2L will be used as the course website. Students need a computer and internet access.
• Google CoLab (freely available) will be used to demonstrate Python based solutions to some problems
• Students will need technology, such as CamScanner on a phone or a scanner, for example, to take a photo or scan a sheet and upload it as a *.pdf file to D2L.