Abstract
THE author raises the old controversy about laboratory work in teaching: Should the student be confronted with a set of apparatus to do an experiment with a title, left with the minimum of prompting to work out the procedure and results to be obtained, and then be given a week or two to write the work up in his own way for subsequent correction by authority, or should he be persuaded to read up previously from specific instructions exactly what he has to do, what theory he is supposed to imbibe for the proper assimilation of the scientific work performed, be given a printed form to fill in with the stated observations and indicated calculations, and so close the deal within a specified laboratory time? Supposing that the latter is the correct procedure, the author could scarcely be bettered in working out a requisite plan. He claims that the hour given to private study, with printed relevant theory (because no course of laboratory work can keep in step with lectures), including pictorial diagrams of connexions (which, we must admit, we had thought had faded out of text-books long ago), before being confronted with the apparatus, leads to a greater efficiency in exercising the student's mind and a more speedy implantment of useful scientific principles. The scheme was developed to avoid the misuse of heredity principles in the recording of experimental work among students.
A Laboratory Manual of Electricity and Magnetism
By Leonard B. Loeb. Revised edition. Pp. xii + 122 + 112 Experiment Data Sheets. (Stanford University, Calif.: Stanford University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1941.) 22s. 6d. net.
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H., L. A Laboratory Manual of Electricity and Magnetism. Nature 149, 181 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149181a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149181a0