Soil Mechanics Laboratory Manual

I have used this book for many years in my Soils & Foundations class that I teach at the University of New Hampshire, and just upgraded to this latest 7th Edition. I was very glad to find that they finally dropped the included diskette that used to be glued into the back, the files on it were very old and frankly worthless, and the "install" routine never worked correctly. I'm pleased my students are no longer paying for it. In general, this is a good book that works well with classes that are in a 2-year AAS program, and it would probably suffice in a 4-year Civil Engineering soils mechanics class. The photos and diagrams are good and clear, as are the descriptions. The blank data sheets in the Appendices are a great addition, as long as you don't care about re-selling the book later. The new graph paper sheets in the back in this edition are also nice, but I still provide my own to my students so they can save their books. The perforations are not very well done, it can be tough to tear out the sheets if you want. I think it would be much better to provide the data sheets and graph paper as PDFs that the students could download from a web page on the Oxford Press website, this would also save a lot of paper and cost of producing the book (hello publishers!! college textbooks are too expensive!!). I also wish this book was spiral-bound so it would properly lay flat when reading the exercises of filling in the datasheets. Probably the biggest detractor in this book is the errors in a few places, that have been there for many editions. I tried to email the author my comments after the previous edition came out, but apparently he never got it, as the errors are still there in this edition. I'll try again, but meanwhile I just point them out to my students so they don't get caught by them.

I have gone through all the experiments carefully,I have found the sequences,the calculations and the method or representing the results in an examplary manner,The simplicity with which the matter has been explained is worth praising.