Some mechanical-engineering programs, like ours here at the University of Utah, use the phrase “Strength of Materials” to refer to what the majority of other mechanical engineers more accurately refer to as “Mechanics of Materials” (often locally shortened to “MoM”).   The latter designation is more appropriate because this class typically is focused on an introduction to elementary elasticity with only very lightweight coverage of failure criteria (and almost never any post-failure theories, which are typically covered in upper-division and grad courses). Our University of Utah class, ME EN 3300, is locally called “Strengths” even though strength is barely covered (and only at an idealized level such as Tresca and von Mises criteria).

The following infographic furthermore shows that engineering textbooks appropriately and overwhelmingly favor MoM over Strengths (to see details, click to open in separate page and then zoom to fit the page):

Thanks go to Dr. Ashley Spear for stimulating this commentary/flame.