158 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1311 



staff of women is employed to make up sets 

 of common chemicals, place them on the stu- 

 dents' desks and on completion of this set of 

 experiments, refill the bottles and place them 

 away for the next time needed. One equip- 

 ping a week generally suffices for a laboratory 

 with several fillings of certain bottles. This 

 plan relieves the instructor of stock duties, 

 but is still open to the objections named 

 above. 



In another large institution with nearly 

 1,000 students in general chemistry, the 

 change was made from the side-shelf plan to 

 the method of supplying a student chemicals 

 at his bench. Here again the amount of lab- 

 oratory work was nearly doubled per after- 

 noon, because of the more efficient handling 

 of supplies and a corresponding saving of 

 students' time. Unfortunately in this insti- 

 tution no provision was made for the putting 

 up of sets of chemicals by the stock division 

 and the entire teaching staff in this division 

 became stock keepers and more energy was 

 expended in filling bottles than in giving in- 

 struction. This overload was at once ob- 

 served in a decreased efficiency of work on the 

 part of the instructor, and strenuous appeals 

 have been made to the administrative head to 

 relieve a most intolerable condition. Much 

 cheaper and less highly trained people can 

 and should be secured to fill bottles and do 

 this kind of work, and a director of a chem- 

 istry department is short-sighted indeed who 

 insists on his teaching staff spending most of 

 their time doing the work of a ten-dollar-a- 

 week boy. It can be clearly seen that the 

 efforts to improve the work in general chem- 

 istry in this particular institution are not 

 appreciated, or conditions wiU be improved at 

 once and the teacher given a chance to per- 

 fect himself in his chosen profession and give 

 the students the benefit of his experience. 

 The failure of an executive to encourage and 

 aid progressive teachers in the development of 

 new ideas along this line is not only a very 

 great injury to the teacher concerned, and to 

 the institution as well, but is professional 

 suicide to the administrator himself. It has 

 been shown that the second scheme is an im- 

 provement over the first, but is still open to 



objections, and while it possesses consider- 

 able merit, it has many fatal defects. 



The third plan, viz., the Freas System in 

 the general chemistry laboratory has all the 

 virtues of the second plan and none of its 

 defects. In fact, when this plan is properly 

 installed and carried out, it leaves little to be 

 desired for both student and instructor. 



The plan in brief is to give the student on 

 his first day all the apparatus and chemicals 

 he will need for that course. The student 

 after the payment of all fees and deposits 

 reports to his instructor and is assigned in 

 writing to a bench in the laboratory. He 

 takes this assignment to the stock room and 

 receives his apparatus and chemicals in heavy 

 cardboard or metal boxes and takes them to 

 his bench. This kit he arranges in his desk 

 as stated in his directions If he has properly 

 arranged his material he can quickly find 

 any special chemical or piece of apparatus 

 and is ready for work within two hoiu-s of 

 starting. He puts his own padlock on his 

 bench and he alone is responsible for its con- 

 tents till his course is completed at the end 

 of the term. He has received just enough of 

 each chemical to perform the experiment plus 

 a slight excess to offset any possible unavoid 

 able accident. Should he be careless and not 

 perform his experiment properly he must go 

 to the store room and sign for more chemicals 

 which of course are charged to his account, 

 and later deducted from his advance breakage 

 and " excess chemicals " deposit. Eight here 

 it should be stated for clearness that the stu- 

 dent is charged for all apparatus and chem- 

 icals, but is given as a free allowance the 

 average value of the chemicals used by his 

 class. If he has a modern bench, with a 

 hod in front of him, all walking about has 

 been eliminated, and the amount of labora- 

 tory work that he can do per afternoon can 

 be nearly tripled over that possible under the 

 side-shelf reagent scheme. 



Contamination of chemicals is impossible 

 under this plan, as each container is plainly 

 labelled and is under the personal care of the 

 student interested. 



The factor of expense has been reduced to 

 the minimum, as there can be no waste from 



