APPARATUS-MAKING IN EDUCATION. 345 



tried. Still other washes are made, some of which may be found 

 a protection. A number of rules are given in The Popnlar Sci- 

 ence News during the year 1882. The house can be kept tolerably 

 free from mosquitoes by using care, and a netting over the bed 

 protects one during the night ; but, when one wishes to spend his 

 summer vacation in the country, he is willing to try anything 

 that will protect him from these most annoying creatures, which 

 make a morning spent in the woods a torture instead of a pleasure. 



-♦*♦- 



APPARATUS-MAKING IN EDUCATION. 



By M. C. WILSON, 



PROFESSOR OF NATURAL SCIENCES, ALABAMA STATE NORMAL SCHOOL. 



BY way of further illustrating the truth of what Prof. Wood- 

 hull says in his article, Home-made Apparatus, in the Au- 

 gust, 1889, number of The Popular Science Monthly, allow me to 

 present some work that has been done here in that direction. 



We have no workshop and no tools. Our method of work is 

 this: In the study of natural philosophy, when a principle is 

 being enunciated, some half-dozen or more members of the class 

 are asked to make the piece of apparatus which illustrates this 

 principle. A week is allowed for its completion, or a longer time, 

 if the work involves much difficulty, or if the pupil has much 

 work in other classes. He is allowed to use any material he can 

 get, and he may ask the aid of a blacksmith, carpenter, or any 

 mechanic. But the work, when brought in, must be neatly fin- 

 ished, and must be made of materials that cost absolutely nothing. 

 Of the six or more pieces of the same kind, the neatest and most 

 accurate one is preserved in school. In this way, in the course of 

 time, some hundreds of pieces of apparatus are made which serve 

 perfectly well to illustrate the principles of natural philosophy. 

 These pieces are handled, tested, and compared by the pupils in 

 the class-rooms, and in this way they voluntarily spend spare min- 

 utes before and after school hours. They consist of such articles 

 as inertia apparatus, steelyard, balance of equal arms, pulleys, in- 

 clined planes, wheel and axle, hydrometer, siphon, fountains, Ley- 

 den jar, pith-ball electroscope, gold-leaf electroscope, batteries of 

 various kinds, magnets, electro-magnets, telegraph apparatus, etc. 

 These, if purchased from an instrument dealer, would amount to 

 several hundred dollars. 



For materials for construction of apparatus, the pupils ask at 

 home or at stores or shops where they are acquainted. There are 

 always bottles, tin-foil, corks, wax, wood, scraps of wire, iron, tin- 

 plate, bits of thread, cloth, etc., to be had for the asking. Almost 



vol. xxxvii. — 26 



