Lecture Demonstrations in General Chemistry

Abstract

THE author of this useful manual rightly states that: “The task of the lecture demonstrator is unusually specialized, requiring, as it does, something of showmanship without submergence of educational objectives. Perhaps no other branch of teaching requires such nicety of balance and such care in presentation”. The student who sees what appear to be simple experiments rapidly and successfully performed does not appreciate the long and difficult apprenticeship which makes such results possible, andthe work of generations of university teachers which is embodied in a course of lecture experiments. It is only when he is called upon to perform these experiments himself, when he has usually to depend on his own resources, that these facts become familiar to the teacher. The number of really useful books to which he can then turn for guidance is quite small and any addition to this field of literature is, therefore, welcome. The keen lecturer, again, is always on the look-out for new experiments, and will be interested in such books.

Lecture Demonstrations in General Chemistry

By Prof. Paul Arthur. (International Chemical Series.) Pp. xvi + 455. (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1940.) 26s.