242 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



true when railroad men use the ordinary skids to unload 

 a carload of barreled goods ? 



8. Is it true that a farmer using a very ordinary team 

 of horses sometimes pulls a high-priced, guaranteed 

 forty- or fifty-horsepower automobile through a bad strip 

 of road or out of a ditch when the auto cannot make 

 headway unaided? 



A live, wide-awake high school class in physics, prop- 

 erly trained and actuated by a wholesome and entirely 

 natural attitude toward their physical environment will, 

 in the course of a year's work, ask and eagerly seek the 

 answers to hundreds of questions similar to those men- 

 tioned. No textbook or set of textbooks can supply the 

 answers to the legitimate questions which arise in the 

 minds of properly trained science students. 



How can a high school class in science be so trained that 

 they naturally assume an attitude of openmindedness and 

 inquiry concerning their environment ; that they will pre- 

 sume that nearly every lesson will reveal the explana- 

 tion of their natural surroundings? Such an attitude of 

 mind rarely, if ever, results when the student is required 

 to perform a hundred or so laboratory exercises as usu- 

 ally outlined in a manual and designed to demonstrate the 

 laws and principles of phj^sics. It has been my experi- 

 ence that but little of the apparatus usually described in 

 our laboratory manuals or commonly found in our lab- 

 oratories is patterned after or reminds the student of ma- 

 chines and utensils which he sees daily in use performing 

 the necessary operations of modern life and industry. 

 To a large extent the equipment of our laboratories is un- 

 like the equipment of our homes and our industries. Is 

 this necessary, to the extent that now prevails, and can 

 we with such apparatus best teach the practical or com- 

 monly applied principles of science? If my laboratory 

 is equipped with a Regnault's apparatus for the deter- 

 mination of the boiling temperature of water under pres- 

 sures ranging from 2 pounds to 60 pounds, is it possible 

 that I might substitute a common pressure cooker with a 

 smaller range of pressure and temperature to the positive 

 advantage of my class? Which is the more profitable 

 experiment : To attempt to determine the calorific value 



