A Laboratory Course in Physics of the Household: To Accompany Lynde's Physics of the Household (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Laboratory Course in Physics of the Household: To Accompany Lynde's Physics of the Household

This Laboratory Course in Physics of the Household covers the ground recommended by the College Entrance Board. It differs from similar courses in four ways: first, it contains Exercises in addition to the usual Experiments; second, it requires the use of the common weights and measures side by side with the metric weights and measures; third, it permits the use of much apparatus familiar to the student; and fourth, it encourages the student to set up a laboratory in his own home.

The Exercises help the student to appreciate how physics is applied in his home and in his environment in general. The Exercises and Experiments together complement the classroom work.

The use of the common weights and measures in addition to the metric weights and measures is justified, in the writers opinion, as follows. Since we require young students to take a laboratory course in physics in order that they may obtain knowledge which they will apply in everyday life, it seems wise to allow them to obtain this knowledge in terms of the units (foot, pound, B.T.U., etc.) which they must use when they so apply it. Furthermore, the writer, although a strong advocate of the metric system, believes that it is pedagogically unsound to try. to teach physics by means of the metric system exclusively. It is an attempt to teach an unknown subject by means of an unknown system of weights and measures and it leads to confusion and lack of power on the part of the student. Long experience leads the writer to believe that the correct method is to introduce the subject by means of the common system and then to use the two systems side by side. This is the method followed in this book.

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