<p>DS is doing book price comparisons and of course renting is the most cost effective. He is uncertain which books he may want to buy and have as reference in the future. </p>
<p>Opinions?</p>
<p>I can’t offer advice but I hope this (recent, June 19) reddit link is useful.<br>
url= reddit(dot)com/r/engineering/comments/28lfpk/engineering_bible </p>
<p>engineering book suggestions. It seems the book for chemE is by an author name “Perry” while the top commenter says Mark’s Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers (link in reddit post)</p>
<p>For Chem Eng, YES, Perry’s Chem Eng’r’s Handbook IS the bible and should be kept if purchased.</p>
<p>For Aero, despite my protestations, my S has not kept one book in the past 2 years (all intro aero/eng’g, calc, diffeq, linear alg, statics, thermo, fluids, circuits…). He says if he needs something, he will look it up on the internet or go to the library. There is a paperback/looseleaf ‘book’ they had to get as Freshman (can’t remember which one), and this is supposed to be useful for taking the PE exam as a senior. It is online, tho, and you can download for free, so he sold that one back as well. Perhaps he will keep some of his Junior and Senior year books?..</p>
<p>Aero, I wish my husband was more like your son. We still have his college books from over 30+ years as they might be useful. He’s an EE so whatever he needed would have been pulled from those boxes already!!! My oldest son, a ME, did keep a few of his books from junior and senior year but is in agreement with your son that most things he might need can be looked up in the internet. Glad my CS third year student kept a few books from freshman year (he forgot to sell them back) as the Calc book and Chemistry book hopefully can be reused by by new UA freshman.</p>
<p>Hey, careful. You never know when you might need to look up something to refresh your memory from 30 years ago. I have a shelf full of college books and I know I look something up in a couple of them occasionally. As for the rest of them, you just never know what problem may arise tomorrow.</p>
<p>I did use many of them as well as class notes and saved tests and homework when I was preparing for the PE exam.</p>
<p>I’m like WAPacker! My husband and I met in grad school. We kept all of our our college books and school stuff. You really don’t know when you will have to design something you’ve never done since college!</p>
<p>DS decided to follow Aeromom’s son – He is renting most except one Physics book where buying used was cheaper than rental. </p>
<p>Also just learned Amazon does sell some web access codes. Statics code looks to be $9 cheaper than SuPe. He’ll wait on the codes until class started.</p>