Abstract
THIS book is written for the American school child. It opens with the statement that “the primary function of first-year general science is to give, as far as possible, a rational, orderly, scientific understanding of the pupil's environment to the end that he may, to some extent, correctly interpret that environment and be master of it. It must be justified by its own intrinsic value as a training for life's work.” Setting out with this idea, the authors take the various phenomena with which the child is likely to be confronted, and deal with them in a manner calculated to arouse his interest. The opening chapter deals with lighting: with candles, lamps, and kerosene; these subjects lead up to evaporation, boiling temperature, etc., then to petroleum, gasolene, coal gas, and finally to electric lighting. In the second chapter the authors pass on to, heating: fires, stoves, combustion and energy, chemical compounds, coal, the measurement of heat, house-heating and cooking. A third chapter is devoted to the refrigerator, which plays a large part in the domestic economy of the States; this leads on to ammonia, the freezing of water, and cold storage. The weather is next discussed. The child by this, time has gathered some general physical ideas and he can the more easily grasp the somewhat complex problems now presented to him. Meteorological instruments, weather charts, the seasons, climate and its relation to health, are all described. The principles of ventilation are then treated at length, followed by an account of dust, the vacuum cleaner, and the dangerous, because dusty, hangings of rooms.
First Course in General Science.
By Prof. F. D. Barber M. L. Fuller Prof. J. L. Pricer Prof. H. W. Adams. Pp. vii + 607. (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1917.)
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First Course in General Science . Nature 98, 348 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/098348a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/098348a0