Excerpt from A Laboratory Course in Physics for Secondary Schools Although laboratory work is now generally recognized as an indispensable part of any adequate course in elementary physics, it is nevertheless a lamentable fact that there are still some schools in which it is not attempted at all, while there are others in which, despite the most expensive equipment, the laboratory fails, on the whole, either to interest or instruct. Both of these conditions are probably attributable to one and the same cause. In our modern glorification of the laboratory method, particularly of exact, quantitative measurements, and in our haste to get away from the superficial, descriptive physics of thirty years ago, some of us have undoubtedly gone so far as to defeat our own aims. We have made the laboratory an impossibility in schools which are financially weak, because we have made its expense prohibitive; and we have made it a disappointment in other schools which are financially strong, because in our eagerness to show our students exactly how much we have neglected to show them how and why. In short, the gravest danger which threatens the efficiency of the high-school laboratory to-day is the danger which arises from the creeping over of the methods and the instruments of research and specialization from the university into the high school, where they have absolutely no place, - the danger that principles shall be lost sight of in the bewildering details of refined methods and refined instruments. 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.