The Outline of Science: A Plain Story Simply Told

Abstract

FROM its title this work (which is to be completed in about twenty parts) claims no more than to give an outline of science. Astronomy occupies some twenty-four pages of part 1; it is necessarily treated very summarily, and much of the information is given by diagrams. This makes it essential that these should be accurate and self-explanatory. Fig. 2 is open to the criticism that it fails to show the great differences between the interplanetary spaces; the orbits are represented as equidistant, and Saturn's period is given as twelve years. Fig. 11 quite fails to show the sun's preeminence compared with the planets. The letterpress under the portrait of Prof. J. C. Adams is disfigured by the substitution of Neptune for Uranus as the perturbed planet. Fig. 6 (the total solar eclipse of 1919) is described as being taken at Greenwich, instead of Sobral, Brazil. On p. 23 it is stated that “mutual friction raises at least a large part of them (the meteors forming a comet) to white heat.” This is quite improbable, since the meteors are travelling on parallel paths with practically equal velocities. In the large diagram illustrating the spectroscope the luminous body appears to be a star, since the sky is dark and other stars are shown. However, no object except the sun could throw a large, bright spectrum on a screen, and in this case a slit (absent from diagram) would be essential for showing the Fraunhofer lines.

The Outline of Science: A Plain Story Simply Told.

Edited by Prof. J. Arthur Thomson. Pp. ii + 40. (London: G. Newnes, Ltd., n.d.) is. 2d. net.