Product Description: As one of the most popular heat transfer texts, Jack Holman's HEAT TRANSFER is noted for its clarity, accessible approach, and inclusion of many examples and problem sets. The new Ninth Edition retains the straight-forward, to-the-point writing style while covering both analytical and empirical approaches to the subject. Throughout the book, emphasis is placed on physical understanding while, at the same time, relying on meaningful experimental data in those situations that do not permit a simple analytical solution. New examples and templates provide students with updated resources for computer-numerical solutions.
Practical but sloppy. Really ugly, too. When I was assigned the book I thought the worst thing about it was the obscene price. Then I saw the book. This is quite possibly the ugliest book cover I have ever seen. Did someone seriously pay someone else to make it? Ugh.
Then I *used* the book. Oddly enough, I was taking two heat transfer courses at the time, a very conceptual one through the Materials Science department (Incropera text) and a very application-based one through Mechanical Engineering. [For the record, the ME course was an easy way to fulfill an MSE "tech elective" requirement.] This is the book used in the ME course.
If you're actually planning to analyze heat and mass transport in your regular life, this is a great reference book, with tons of empirical formulas and constants and other wonders. If you're planning to publish papers in heat transfer, you may want to consider Frank Incropera's text to gain a solid mathematical understanding of the subject. There were several numerical errors that jumped out at me when I was using the book, especially considering that this is the ninth edition. Keep your eye for this sloppy editing and I think you'll find this book to be pretty okay.
Just Awful This is an awful choice for an introduction to this material. The text doesn't go into detail on the sections, and the examples can be better. Errors in the text can screw you up to.
The Good and the Bad The Good: - A nice amout of examples. - Whatever is explained is explained pretty well. - Friendly style of writing. The Bad: - No solution manual. - Some mistakes in the solved examples. The Worst: - There is no focus on the heat transfer sceince itself - the equations are "dumped" on you with no explanations/development or even some example experiments that were made to get to the equations. The focus is on application of the equations to engineering problems and methods of solving differential equations.
The bottom line: This book will not give you an understanding of the heat transfer science, but the ability to solve heat transfer problems. If that's what you look for - this is your book. Otherwise, look for something else.
Why only five stars? This book is a winner . Forget about any other substitute . In this detailed text you will find all you want about every ine of the multiple equations about the heat transfer , clearly and powerful illustrated . The level of the problems are gradually increased so when you decide to solve them you will become in a real gladiator in this topic . I recommend it deeply . Since I acquired it I noticed the little difference that makes the great difference . This is a heavyweight text and hardly you will find out another better than this . A must for Chemical , Mechanical and Industrial engineers!
A League of Its Own In Holman's (the author) spirit I'll keep this simple. This text (along with Moran/Shapiro's introductory text in thermodynamics) is among the best textbooks met during the course of a civil, aerospace or mechanical enginnering study. The language used constitutes what should be an "industrial standard" for engineering textbooks. It keeps the level of attention peaking by avoiding loose talk and wordy explanations where this is not required. This is (academic) litterature in its truest sense. I own about 50 science/engineering texts within fluid mechanics, solid mechanics/dynamics, mathematics, physics and more. Among these, this book is top three - no small feat.
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