Mat 5, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



627 



it does, the cause of the delay is investi- 

 gated. Of course, a stock of supplies equal 

 to all ordinary demands must be available, 

 and in the larger laboratories this stock 

 represents an investment of at least sixty 

 to eighty thousand dollars. 



In all laboratories, much glass apparatus 

 is returned in dirty condition. Since it 

 will not be accepted in this condition by 

 another student, it can not be received. It 

 is thrown away and the student's account 

 is charged with its value. Installing dish- 

 washing machinery will save the greater 

 part of this expense and reduce materially 

 the number of new articles to be ordered, 

 received, unpacked, checked, and stored. 

 In our own experience the substitution of 

 a charge for washing, in place of a charge 

 for the whole cost of the apparatus thrown 

 away because of being dirty, as it had been 

 made the year before, reduced the break- 

 age bills for an equal number of students 

 by nearly $1,200. During the year the ap- 

 paratus of instructors and the apparatus 

 used in lectures can be washed at one cen- 

 tral place more economically than by scat- 

 tered, unsupervised labor. Then too, in 

 many courses, cleaning apparatus takes up 

 much of the time of the student. A grad- 

 uate student, who is paying tuition, room- 

 rent, board and other living expenses, and 

 who is sacrificing his earning power to ob- 

 tain further education, can save time which 

 has a high money value to him by sending 

 his apparatus to the supply-room for clean- 

 ing. 



Ring-stands and burners are usually 

 painted with asphalt paint. This gives an 

 exceptionally porous covering, especially 

 fitted to permit access of laboratory gases 

 and to hold moisture. One investigator 

 finds that when more than two coats of 

 paint have been applied, rusting is not re- 

 tarded but accelerated. The sand blast 

 will take off every trace of the paint with 



astonishing ease and thus, with a single 

 coat of new paint, of a properly chosen 

 kind, every article placed in the outfit wiU 

 look as good as new. Ill-kept apparatus 

 fosters careless work, while nice-looking ap- 

 paratus guides the student, without his 

 being conscious of the influence, into clean- 

 cut and satisfactory manipulation. 



The sand-blast reminds us that a me- 

 chanic and a workshop are necessary fea- 

 tures of a large laboratory. One recent re- 

 search by an eminent chemist indicated 

 that he made an electroscope out of a 

 tomato can tied to an empty Lydia E. Pink- 

 liam medicine box by means of tan-colored 

 shoe laces of the latest model. A more effi- 

 cient and durable instrument could have 

 been made with the help of a mechanic, 

 and much of the time the professor and stu- 

 dent spent in trying to work with this ag- 

 gregation would have been saved. It is 

 more economical to purchase standard ap- 

 paratus, but, when modified forms are re- 

 quired, when repairs are needed, and when 

 new apparatus is devised for research, the 

 mechanic, readily accessible in the build- 

 ing, is a necessity. 



Another problem of the laboratory is to 

 utilize the desk space during a larger pro- 

 portion of the time. If many of the desks 

 are to be used during only two afternoons 

 in the week, and are to remain idle during 

 four fifths of the working hours, one can 

 not provide a desk for each student, with 

 all the overhead cost for the building and 

 plumbing which that implies. In some 

 courses, three or four cupboards, each capa- 

 ble of holding the whole outfit, can be pro- 

 vided under each working space, and three 

 or four students can be accommodated. 

 But in many cases, as in quantitative anal- 

 ysis and organic chemistry, the outfit is ex- 

 tensive, and often only one student can use 

 the desk. Yet the space is not really util- 

 ized. Most of the apparatus is placed on 



