"Do not give them any more straw to make bricks with, as your custom has been; let them go and find straw for themselves" (Exodus 5).

Composites are becoming an essential part of today's materials because they offer advantages such as low weight, corrosion resistance, high fatigue strength, faster assembly, etc.  Composites are used as materials in making aircraft structures to golf clubs, electronic packaging to medical equipment, and space vehicles to home building.  Composites are generating curiosity and interest in students all over the world.  They are seeing everyday applications of composite materials in the commercial market, and job opportunities are increasing in this field.  The technology transfer initiative of the US federal government is opening new and large scale opportunities for use of advanced composite materials.

Several resources are available to you, whether you are a student at USF or elsewhere . If you are using the Mechanics of Composite Materials book by the author (55 universities have adopted the book worldwide), please visit the website dedicated to the book.   Check out the course syllabus at USF, course objectives, table of contents, annotations on WebPages related to  to composite materials, magazine articles, and videos.   Take note of the errata, while checking if you are getting the same answers as the problems in the book.  You can test drive the book via Google search, and if you like what you see, get one for yourself.  See if you agree with the reviews of others, and if your answer is yes or no, leave another review (there is something about the wisdom of crowds).

As you take the course, you can also take multiple choice question exams to check if you have developed some basic knowledge of the course material. These tests are not meant to assess the higher levels of learning as suggested by Bloom's taxonomy.   If you have bought the book, you can download the software and the accompanying manual.   

Read why the Fall 2008 students took the class; if your reasons are similar or you feel inspired to take the class, join me in the journey of learning next Fall in 2011 (MWF 2-2:50 - yes you have to come to a Friday afternoon class - fun! fun! fun!).  There are some pre-requisites though - you need to have taken Mechanics of Solids course and have a good background in Matrix Algebra (know what a matrix is, special types of matrices, matrix addition, subtraction, multiplication, and inverse, and Gaussian elimination).