(1) Mechanics and Heat: a Text-book for Colleges and Technical Schools (2) A Text-book of Physics

Abstract

(I) WITHIN the last half-century much experience has been gained as to the methods which can be used most profitably in the teaching of science; nevertheless, there is still much diversity of opinion as to the best method to be used. Followers of the heuristic school maintain that a student should build up his knowledge of science by his own unaided exertions, the function of a teacher being to guide the student's mind insidiously toward the correct path. Has any teacher ever attempted to proceed severely on these lines? It may be doubted. So far as the teaching of physics is concerned, such an attempt would be so ridiculously futile that no one could have made it seriously. Ideas such as those connoted by the words “energy,” “potential,” “entropy,” and a host of similar expressions could scarcely be derived by any student, even if he were of the type that might develop subsequently into a Kelvin or a Rayleigh. Quite apart, however, from the question of possibility, it may be argued that no student has received a satisfactory training unless he has learned to profit by the knowledge which has been accumulated by others. Dismissing, then, the claims of the heuristic system as enunciated by its most rigid adherents, the question arises, To what extent is a student necessarily dependent on personal observation, and to what extent is it profitable for him to imbibe ideas directly from his teacher? No general answer can be given to this question, since so much must depend on the personalities of both the student and the teacher; but if it be accepted that science is the study of real phenomena, it must follow that the practical work done by the student must be sufficiently extensive to give him a clear idea of the phenomena which he investigates. Not only the nature of the experiments, but the order in which they are performed, is of importance. Most of the difficulty experienced by students in becoming acquainted with the dynamical properties of solids and fluids is due to the practice of studying the laws of statics exhaustively before the laws of motion have been mastered; much of the time now spent in the experimental study of statics might be devoted with advantage to the performance of simple experiments designed to illustrate the laws of dynamics. In a systematic course of study an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of mechanical principles should be gained as early as possible, for most of the exact sciences cannot be mastered without such a knowledge. (1) Mechanics and Heat: a Text-book for Colleges and Technical Schools. By W. S. Franklin Barry Macnutt. Pp. x + 409. (New York: The Macmillan Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1910.) Price 7s. 6d. (2) A Text-book of Physics. By H. E. Hurst R. T. Lattey. Pp. x + 638. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1910.) Price 8s. 6d. net.