132 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 813 



schools of this country in preparing youths for 

 college. The replies tabulated were 158 in all, 

 49 from New England, 16 from the Middle Atlan- 

 tic States, 55 from the Central West, 21 from 

 Nebraska and 17 from California. The numbers 

 given in this table are per cents., showing what 

 portion of the tabulated replies reported the exer- 

 cises opposite which these numbers are placed. 



No exercise is named in the first part of the 

 table, which was reported by less than 60 per cent. 

 of the total number of replies tabulated. But in 

 the second part of the table a number of pairs of 

 exercises are named, in each of which pairs one 

 exercise may be regarded as a mere variant of 

 the other, the added per cent, for each pair being 

 greater than 80, though no one of these exercises 

 alone was reported by 60 per cent, of the total 

 number of replies. 



(C. E. B.) refers to the revised list of the Col- 

 lege Entrance Board, (H. ) to the Harvard list 

 and (N. Y. ) to the syllabus of the regents of New 

 York State. 



6. Such a test has been found entirely prac- 

 ticable at Harvard, where it has been used for 

 many years. Teachers who are familiar with its 

 workings seem to be, as a rule if not unanimously, 

 strongly in favor of it. 



7 and 8. College teachers are apt to conclude, 

 from the fact that boys a year or two from the 

 schools often appear ignorant of elementary laws 

 and facts in physics, that the school teaching in 

 this subject is of little value and should be dis- 

 regarded. But how do the results of the college 

 teacher's own efforts on these same boys appear 

 when tested a year or two later by an unsym- 

 pathetic examiner? 



It is not to be expected that the college course 

 referred to in (8) would be exactly like a school 

 course. It might, for example, have a somewhat 

 fuller treatment of kinetics than the schools would 

 find advisable, though college teachers find it diffi- 

 cult to put the ideas of accelerating force, dynes, 

 poundals, ergs, foot poundals, etc., into perma- 

 ment and useful form in the minds of their stu- 

 dents in a one-year general course of physics. 



9. As an alternative for the complete ignoring 

 of kinetics, colleges might, while requiring noth- 

 ing about " absolute units " of force or energy, 

 encourage the schools to do as follows: 



Give the " laws of falling bodies," v = gt, 

 s = igt-, if=z2gs, as facts shown by observa- 

 tion, and with lecture-room experiments and the 

 simplest problems illustrate these laws. 



Teach the application of the same laws to 

 risitig bodies, as justified by observation, using 



still the simplest cases, avoiding, for example, 

 instances in which s is the distance of an uncom- 

 pleted ascent. 



Define work and energy in gravitation units 

 only and make the pupil familiar with the 

 formulas, 



work of raising a mass to to a height s = ms. 

 work a mass m can do in descending a distance 



s=: ms, 

 or potential energy of mass m at height s =ms. 



Then show that a mass m, starting upward with 

 a velocity v, which will carry it to a height 

 s=: (v--r-2g), thus doing an amount of work = 

 ?rts=: («!!/- H- 2g), is properly said to have at the 

 start an amount of energy = {mv-^^2g), which 

 energy is called kinetic. 



POSTAL-CARD CIECULAE OF JANUARY 10, 1910 



1 am sending cards to those who, at my request, 

 left their names for me after the joint meeting 

 of Sections B and L of the A. A. A. S. in Boston, 

 December 21, 1909. 



I beg that you will indicate, on the return part 

 of this card, your opinion concerning each of the 

 nine propositions which were formally before that 

 meeting (and which had been printed in Science 

 for October 29, 1909, p. 578) by crossing out the 

 word not in the case of each proposition that you 

 approve and leaving it standing in the ease of 

 each proposition that you do not approve, with 

 whatever changes in the words following the 

 numerals may be necessary in any case. 



Will you please write me any suggestions which 

 you have to make that are not covered by the 

 propositions in question? 



1 wish to publish the replies in substance. 



FOR REPLY 

 I am 



not in favor of ( 1 ), with (without) the suggestion 

 of A.M. degree; 



not " " " (2) ; 



not " " " ( 3 ) ; 



not " " " (4), with the suggestion of "voca- 

 tional " training for the as- 

 sistant; 



not " " " (5) ; 



not " " " (6), if any examination, is main- 

 tained; 



not " " " (7) ; 



not" " " (8), with the understanding that the 

 college course need not be the 

 duplicate of a school course; 



not " " " (9), as originally written; 



not " " " (9), in the alternative form, encour- 



