Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism

Abstract

WE are glad to welcome a really admirable attempt to place before students the modern doctrines concerning electricity and magnetism in a popular but reasonably accurate form. The book begins with a rapid historical sketch of the long known facts on which it is the custom to dilate in every elementary text-book on electricity; but the historical statements indicate by little additional details that they have not been simply copied from the joint-stock property of text-book writers, but that some original authorities have been referred to. This portion of the book occupies the first 190 pages, and it does not call for special remark; the illustrations are, as a rule, familiar ones, but there is a very convenient magnetic map of England for 1888 as a frontispiece; and everything relating to the use of iron filings is well and clearly put, as would naturally be expected. The author's statements of the well-worn facts are moreover interspersed with notes and characteristic touches which redeem them from dulness.

Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism.

By Silvanus P. Thompson, Professor of Experimental Physics in University College, Bristol. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1881.)