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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 774 



given to the laboratory examination than to the 

 note-book in determining the candidate's attain- 

 ments in physics. Experience has shown that 

 pupils can make the original record of their ob- 

 servations entirely presentable, so that copying 

 will be unnecessary, and they should in general be 

 required to do so. 



This course, if taken in the last year of the 

 candidate's preparation, is expected to occupy in 

 laboratory work, recitations and lectures, five of 

 the ordinary school periods, about fifty minutes 

 in length, per week for the whole year. With few 

 exceptions exercises like those in the descriptive 

 list already mentioned can be performed in a 

 single school period, but for satisfactory results 

 it will often be necessary to repeat an exercise. 

 Two periods per week for the year should be suffi- 

 cient for the laboratory work proper. If the 

 course is begun much earlier than the last year of 

 the candidate's preparation, as it well may be, 

 it will require more time. 



A new edition of the Harvard "Descrip- 

 tive List" was issued in 1897. It con- 

 tained sixty-one exercises, though the labo- 

 ratory requirement was now reduced to 

 thirty-five exercises. 



The arrangement of exercises in the new 

 list was peculiar, optics being interpolated 

 between two divisions of mechanics. This 

 was part of an attempt to encourage the 

 performance of elementary laboratory ex- 

 periments by pupils in the early years of 

 the secondary school course or even in the 

 grammar school. 



A third edition of the list, with many 

 changes in details but no fundamental 

 alterations, appeared in 1903, and this, 

 with possibly slight typographical correc- 

 tions, is the current form of this familiar 

 document. 



In 1897 a committee on physics of the 

 science department of the National Educa- 

 tional Association was appointed to assist 

 in the work of the association's general 

 committee on college entrance require- 

 ments. The make-up of the physics com- 

 mittee was as follows: 



E. H. Hall (chairman). Harvard University. 



H. S. Carhart, University of Michigan. 



R. B. Fulton, University of Mississippi. 



C. L. Harrington, Sachs' Collegiate Institute, 

 New York. 



Julius Hortvet, East Side High School, Minne- 

 apolis. 



C. J. Ling, Manual Training School, Denver. 



E. L. Nichols, Cornell University. 



E. D. Peirce, Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Conn. 



Eernando Sanford, Stanford University. 



B. F. Thomas, Ohio State University. 



Edward E. Bobbins, Lawrenceville School, 

 Lawrenceville, N. J. 



This committee evolved five general 

 propositions which, without substantial 

 change, were in 1890 commended by the 

 departments of secondary and higher edu- 

 cation of the National Educational Asso- 

 ciation and recommended to the colleges 

 of the country "as offering a basis for the 

 practical solution of the problems of col- 

 lege admission" in physics. These propo- 

 sitions were : 



1. That in public high schools and schools pre- 

 paratory for college physics be taught in a course 

 occupying not less than one year of daily exer- 

 cises, more than this amount of time to be taken 

 for the work if it is begun earlier than the next 

 to the last year of the school course. 



2. That this course of physics include a large 

 amount of laboratory work, mainly quantitative, 

 done by the pupils under the careful direction of 

 a competent instructor and recorded by the pupil 

 in a note-book. 



3. That such laboratory work, including the 

 keeping of a note-book and the working out of 

 results from laboratory observations, occupy ap- 

 proximately one half of the whole time given to 

 physics by the pupil. 



4. That the course also include instruction by 

 text-book and lecture, with qualitative experi- 

 ments by the instructor, elucidating and enforcing 

 the laboratory work, or dealing with matters not 

 touched upon in that work, to the end that the 

 pupil may gain not merely empirical knowledge, 

 but, so far as this may be practicable, a compre- 

 hensive and connected view of the moat important 

 facts and laws in elementary physics. 



5. That college admission requirements be so 

 framed that a pupil who has successfully followed 

 out such a course of physics as that here de- 

 scribed may offer it toward satisfying such re- 

 quirements. 



