HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY GIFT OF GEORGE ARTHUR PLIMPTON COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. COOLEY'S PHYSICS. W. P. I PREFACE. THE best method of teaching physics to beginners consists of a wise combination of oral instruction, the study of a textbook, and laboratory work. By oral instruction, involving illustrative experiments, the pupil should be enabled to see, in the outset, just what phenomena are to be the subject of each study. In the text-book he should find a plain, logical, and accurate outline of the facts and explanations, with formulated statements of definitions and principles relating to the subject. In the laboratory he should practice those experimental methods of reaching or testing truths which will most surely impel him to be circumspect, methodical, accurate, and conscientious in whatever he does and thinks. An outline of such a course is presented in this book. This work differs from many other elementary text-books in this respect: It contains much less descriptive material for purely illustrative work, and much more of that which is necessary for systematic and successful quantitative study. The kind and quantity of illustrative work in the class room would better be left to the judgment of the teacher than to be fully laid down in the text-book. The teacher can better adapt it to the age and attainments of his pupils, and should be free to carry it out with the apparatus which he may possess. Such adaptation, together with the charm of novelty, will make the phenomena real and attractive in a degree far beyond the power of any printed description. Moreover, so much illustrative material is already accessible to both teacher and pupil |