Apeil 10, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



523 



belongs to the age of maehines, which is 

 founded on a faith in men and in things. 

 If I were to stop here, I would have de- 

 fined industrial physics in its fullest sense. 

 I would not, however, have given any 

 specific directions as to how to go to work 

 to frame a real course in industrial physics. 

 "What subject-matter shall be used? What 

 topics? These are very practical and very 

 pressing questions in the every-day routine 

 of schools. To such questions as these there 

 is but one answer ; namely, use any subject 

 matter in which you can get your pupils so 

 absorbed that they forget everything else 

 but the thing they are doing. Use the sub- 

 ject-matter of the old syllabus, if you want 

 to, and if you think that you have the 

 genius so to clothe it with significance that 

 all the students will become absorbed in it. 

 It is not absolutely impossible to do this. 

 Experience seems to indicate, however, that 

 teachers will have more success if they 

 change the type of problem from the kind 

 in which only physicists are naturally in- 

 terested to a kind that has more local color 

 and that the rest of the world find essen- 

 tial. For example, instead of trying to in- 

 terest the pupils in the errors of thermom- 

 eter scales, the specific heat of aluminum, 

 or the coefficients of expansion of iron and 

 brass, why not set the class on the problem 

 of finding the best grade of coal in town? 

 Or perhaps they would find the relative 

 efficiencies of various types of cooking 

 utensils and gas stoves a fruitful topic ? If 

 such topics as these seem to lack the appeal 

 to the creative instincts, the design and 

 construction of an electric lighting system 

 for a house or a miniature town might 

 prove more stimulating. If this still seems 

 to lack the vitality of the real thing, organ- 

 ize the class into a scientific information 

 bureau and invite the citizens to send in 

 their real problems to the class for solu- 

 tion. A plan of this kind, in operation in 



Springfield, Mass., was described in the 

 November number of School Science and 

 Mathematics. It suggests rich possibilities. 



The best example of industrial science 

 that I know of is the work of the com 

 clubs and the canning clubs of the south. 

 This work was started and is being guided 

 by the General Education Board, and is 

 wholly independent of all school systems. 

 It has, therefore, not been standardized to 

 death. Corn clubs are for the boys, and 

 their purpose is to see which boy can raise 

 the greatest number of bushels of corn per 

 acre. The boy who, by his careful attention 

 to this work, actually produced 210 bush- 

 els from his acre, as well as all the other 

 boys involved, incidentally have been rais- 

 ing other things than corn. They are be- 

 ginning to have faith in things and in 

 what they can do with things. They are 

 beginning to appreciate the value of facts 

 as facts. Their imaginations are at work, 

 figuring, perhaps, how they may slip the 

 corn belt down south and leave Illinois, 

 with its measly 34 bushels per acre up in 

 the cold. They are contributing to the 

 world 's work. They are having real indus- 

 trial science. 



In like manner, the canning clubs are for 

 the girls. They meet at the houses of the 

 members and can tomatoes which they 

 have themselves raised. They work with 

 enthusiasm, and have so far perfected their 

 product that, in open market, they get two 

 cents a can more for it than is paid for 

 factory brands. Unlike factory hands, they 

 are happy in their work. They are learn- 

 ing that the scientific spirit pays. Like the 

 boys, the girls have been raising other 

 things as well as tomatoes. They too are 

 beginning to master the syllabus of indus- 

 trial science, and to have faith in things 

 and in facts, and to see the world in a new 

 perspective. If this sort of work continues 

 and develops farther, who knows but that 



