RECORDS 65 



Editor 1 ,000.00 



Total ;^i, 910.00 



Surplus ;^ 1, 090.00 



Respectfully submitted, 



J. McKeen Cattell, 

 Charles Lane Poor, 

 Henry E. Crampton. 



SECTION OF ASTRONOMY, PHYSICS AND 



CHEMISTRY. 



May 5, 1902. 



Section met at 8:30 P. M., Charles Lane Poor presiding. 

 The minutes of the last meeting of Section were read and ap- 

 proved. 



The following program was then offered : 



R. W. Wood, Anomalous Dispersion and its Bearing on 



ASTROPHYSICAL PROBLEMS. 



W. S. Day, An Experiment Relating to the Application 

 OF Lagrange's Equations of Motion to Electric Currents. 



Summary of Papers. 



Dr. Day's paper was as follows : 



The experiment was analogous to one mentioned by Max- 

 well in his " Treatise on PLlectricity and Magnetism," Section 

 574, Volume II. Maxwell's experiment was made for the 

 purpose of discovering whether or not, in the expression for 

 the kinetic energy of an electric current, there was a term de- 

 pending on the product of the current and the velocity of the 

 conductor. In a single linear circuit having only one degree 

 of mechanical freedom, the expression for the kinetic energy of 

 the system in the most general case would be of the form : 



,-,2 



in which x is the velocity of the mechanical coordinate, y is the 

 current, / is a quantity of the nature of a mass, L is the self- 



