Abstract
As one who has had the privilege of seeing Mr. Dymond's excellent arrangement and outlay of money in his laboratory at Chelmsford, may I make a comment on his letter in your issue of July 13? I think the conditions of work in an average school laboratory show some points of difference from those in Mr. Dymond's laboratory. Of course qualitative analysis is now confined to quite senior boys, who can be persuaded not to treat the subject as if they were working from a cookery book; but though owning no allegiance to the Science and Art Department, I believe that drawers and lockers are valuable, not only in relieving the general stock of the laboratory (very heavy for descriptive and quantitative work) of some smaller apparatus in constant use, but also in conferring a feeling of ownership, which induces some care and respect in a boy for his belongings. With snap-locks answering to one master key, and the lockers of each class bearing a label of a distinctive colour, they may be at once opened by the assistant before a class, so that there need be no keys to lose and no depredations on neighbouring lockers. Mr. Dymond's objection to that most durable of woods—teak—or why it alone should be left in a dirty state, I do not understand. Admitting that in all but very elementary work some tuition in the way of lectures is necessary, a laboratory will generally possess a lecture room; and where this is a separate room, I grudge the space usually given to a demonstrator's table in the laboratory, because no large section of a practical class is ever doing the same experiment at the same time. Physics, again, is often involved in this question of arrangement in a school, since the two subjects may, I think, with little detriment and great economy often have a common lecture room. Considering the prodigal waste of space often seen in laboratories, and the number now being built by public bodies, some further views on this subject ought to be of value.
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MUNBY, A. School Laboratory Plans. Nature 60, 292 (1899). https://doi.org/10.1038/060292a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/060292a0
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