Excerpt from Laboratory Exercises in Elementary Physics The book is made up mainly Of the author's instructions to his own pupils for their laboratory work. The course of which this forms a part includes also the performance of all necessary descriptive experiments before the class, and the use of a text-book. Before the pupil goes to work in the laboratory at all, he-should be given a general idea of how knowledge is acquired experimentally, and the steps involved in carrying on an experimental investigation. The instruction on these points should be illustrated by some simple typical experiments by the teacher. After wards the relative order Of text-book and laboratory work will naturally depend upon the nature of the laboratory exercises. In exercises involving the study of conditions, as in those on Magnetism, and some of those on Electricity and Heat, the author prefers that the laboratory work pre cede the text-book work; but in exercises involving definite measurement, as in Specific Gravity and Specific Heat, this order may well be reversed. Certainly, in the determina tion of a physical law by measurements of two values, as in the exercises on Elasticity or on the Pendulum, the labora tory work should come first. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.