# Statics

An outline of statics is located here.

The teachings of Erik Johnson at the University of Southern California were vital to the completion of this outline.

The textbook “Engineering Mechanics: Statics,” by Hibbeler, is also highly recommended.

“Statics” is typically the first course to which structural engineering students are exposed. In this course, the structures are simple enough that all relevant forces can be determined without knowledge of the physical materials that the structures are made of.  In fact, the structures in this course can be assumed rigid, even though no real life structures are truly rigid. By the end of the course, the students should be able to apply the equations of static “equilibrium” to any structure, by creating “free-body-diagrams.”  A carefully chosen free-body-diagram is the starting point when analyzing any real life structure, whether it is an entire building, a component of a building, or a machine, biological structure, etc. By solving many statics problems, students may begin to develop an intuition for the “path” that forces tend to take within certain kinds of structures. More importantly, as we will see in later outlines, a carefully chosen free-body-diagram is almost always the starting point when deriving important structural engineering principles beyond “statics.”