March 24, rgioj 



NATURE 



I I 



other States asked that their universities should also be 

 admitted to the foundation. The fact that only five State 

 institutions, one of these in Canada, have been admitted 

 to the Carnegie Foundation, after a year of administration 

 of the rules under which tax-supported colleges and 

 universities became eligible, testifies to the scrutinv 

 exercised in the admission of institutions. There are now 

 sixty-seven institutions on the accepted list. 



The second section of the report is devoted to an 

 examination of the working of the rules for retirement, as 

 shown in the experience of the past four years. As a 

 result of the experience, two changes were made in the 

 rules by the trustees ; one extends the benefits of the 

 retiring allowance system so that service as an instructor 

 shall count toward the earning of a retiring allowance. 

 Heretofore only service in the rank of professor was 

 counted toward an allowance. The other change makes 

 retiremei*t after twenty-five years of service possible only 

 in the case of disability unfitting the te.icher for active 

 service. Except in the case of such disability, the teacher 

 can, under the rules as now framed, claim a retiring 

 allowance only upon attaining the age of sixtv-five. 

 Formerly a professor might retire after twenty-five years 

 of service. This change in the rules does not. however, 

 deprive the widow of a teacher who has had twenty-five 

 years of service of her pension. 



The third section of the report is devoted to tax-sup- 

 ported institutions. Agricultural education and the agri- 

 cultural college are also treated at length. The trustees 

 make clear their intention . to ask of the institutions of 

 every State whether the university and the college of agri- 

 culture are competing or cooperating parts of a State 

 svstem of education. The low standards and general 

 demoralisation resulting from the competition of these two 

 types of tax-supported institutions in the various States are 

 painted out. In the fourth section of the report it is said 

 to be noteworthy that only a small proportion of the 

 colleg'i's and universities calling on the public for support 

 print a straightforward financial statement showing what 

 they do with the money collected from the public. Follow- 

 ing th^ report of the president is the report of the treasurer. 

 In this matter the foundation has followed the advice 

 which it gives to other institutions, and prints a detailed 

 statement, showing, not onlv the larger items of expense, 

 but even the. individual salaries which are paid. 



BOSTON MEETING OF THE AMERICAN 



ASSOCIATION. 



Extracts from the Addresses of Sectional Presidents. 



The Teaching of Physics. 



N his address to Section B (Physics), Prof. K. E. 



* Guthe discussed reforms needed in the teaching of 



)hysics. He maintained that the decision as to how 



)hysics should be taught rests finally with those men who 



now the subject, understand the spirit of the science, and 



or this reason are the only judges of its characteristic 



ducational value. Concerning himself particularly with 



he teaching of physics in .American colleges and universi- 



ies, he proposed two questions, " May not the preparation 



hich professors give future teachers be faulty? " and 



May not the professors' teaching be capable of improve- 



lent? " He said he believed both these questions should 



e answered in the affirmative. The system of the teach- 



ig of physics in many .American colleges and universities 



, he maintained, more adapted to train professional 



hysicists than future high-school teachers. The two 



hould receive a different training. The ideal high-school 



acher is one who has passed through a complete and 



lorough graduate course. .\t the present time the great 



lajority of American high-school teachers do not go beyond 



raduation, and Prof. Guthe would deplore any attempt 



) crowd so much physics into the undergraduate course 



lat the physicist finally turned out lacks the general 



ilture which an undergraduate course should give. 



merican professors of phvsics should, he insisted, 



iiphasise more problem work in connection with the 



ementary course. An utter helplessness of many higher 



nssmen in attacking elementarv rrobl<»ms is not unusual. 



he laboratory work given with the elementary course is 



NO. 2108, VOL. 83] 



frequently quite insufficient, and a somewhat advanced 

 course, not in special lines, but covering the whole field, 

 will do an untold amount of good. Finally, there should 

 be a general review of the whole subject from a higher 

 point of view than is possible in the elementary course. 

 The calculus might be a required study for this. At this 

 point subjects might be taken up which have been omitted 

 in the first course ; the treatment could be more thorough 

 and more exact. The introduction of such an adv?.nced 

 course would also have a good influence upon the first 

 course. Prof. Guthe advised future teachers of physics to 

 take also a course in meteorology, a short course in 

 dynamo-electric machinery, and an elementar>' course in 

 instrument-making, all of which might properly be given 

 in the physics department. Such a graded course will 

 produce, he thinks, teachers to whom may be left without 

 hesitancy the question as to how physics should be taught 

 in the high school. The second proposition considered 

 was, " Professors of physics are far from being unanimous 

 in the use of certain terms, and frequently employ the 

 same term to designate two entirely different physical 

 quantities." This means that enough attention is not paid 

 to the very things which make physics so valuable as a 

 training of the mind, namely, clearness of thinking and 

 accuracy of expression. Prof. Guthe cited and considered 

 numerous cases in point, among them being the terms 

 used in connection with pressure, surface tension, measure- 

 ment of quantities of heat, and fields of magnetic force. 



The Study of Solutions. 



Prof. Louis Kahlenberg, of the University of Wisconsin, 

 presided over Section C (Chemistn,), and in his address 

 dealt with the past and future of the study of solutions. 



The studv of solutions, he said, was begun with the 

 chemical conception of solutions, and upon this conception 

 many relationships were worked out during the first 

 eighty-seven years of the nineteenth century. The older 

 chemists clearly recognised that whether solution will take 

 place or not in a given case is first of all determined by 

 the chemical nature of the substances brought into contact 

 with each other. They saw that the temperature factor 

 was next in importance, and th.it pressure was of vital 

 consequence when a gas \yas under consideration, but of 

 slight importance in the case of solids and liquids. When 

 the conception that solutions are mere physical mixtures 

 came to the foreground, through the introduction of gas 

 analogies and the intense propagandism of the dilut*' 

 school, the fact that the act of "solution is really chemical 

 in character was lost sight of bv many able, enthusiastic' 

 voung investigators. In the ardour of their quest they 

 were misled, and unwittingly they naturally misled others. 

 It is really pitiable to see how physiologists, having thus 

 taken up these misconceptions of the nature of solutions, 

 are still wasting precious time in endeavouring to work 

 out the complicated and ven,- important processes that' 

 occur in living plants and animals. In thes" problems, 

 which are in realitv- perhaps the vpr>- greatest that confront 

 us at the present day, theories of solutions based on gas 

 analogies are of no avail. They are thoroughly mislead- 

 ing and worse than worthless here. 



The clear recognition that solutions are really chemical 

 in charactf^r, and that there is no wide gulf that separates 

 the act of solution from other chemical phenomena, w-ill 

 do much toward furthering th° future study of the subject. 

 Years of experimental study of the chemical, physical, and 

 phvsiological properties of a long list of both aqueous and 

 non-aqueous solutions have led to the conviction that the 

 act of solution is chemical, that solutions are chemical 

 combinations, and that we can only make real i)rogr9SS 

 toward a better understanding of the various solutions by 

 recognising this as the basis of all our future work. 

 The efforts to gain a better insight into the different solu- 

 tions that confront us must be chiefly experimental, rather 

 than mathematical ; for in the study of solutions, just as 

 in the studv of chemical compounds in the narrower sense 

 of the word, w'e are continually confronted with discon- 

 tinuities. Now discontinuous functions cannot be h.indled 

 mathematically at present, not even by the greatest of our 

 mathematicians, for though work of this kind has been 

 begun, it is still in a verv rudimentary- stage. It is 

 highlv probable, too, that the renewed study of solutions 



