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Abstract

The course ‘Engineering Mechanics’ plays an essential role as a bridge and bond between fundamental and specialized knowledge, and it has become a basic class for most engineering students. However, there are many complex concepts and formulas to be covered, and this makes it difficult for students to grasp the spirit of engineering mechanics. One way to solve this problem is to use the analogy study method in learning. Following this new route, students can find the linear quantities and angular quantities in theoretical mechanics, and some analogous relations between stress and deformation for fundamental deformations in mechanics of materials. Through these analogy relations, students can appreciate the essence of different physical phenomena. Indeed, it seems that twice as much is accomplished with half the effort.

Keywords

engineering mechanics analogy theoretical mechanics mechanics of materials similarity

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