PROFESSOR OF EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE, STAFF COLLEGE, SANDHURST.

WILLIAM

CALIFORNI

NEW YORK:

WOOD AND CO., PUBLISHERS,

56 & 58 LAFAYETTE PLACE.

1886.

ADVERTISEMENT

ΤΟ

THE

TWELFTH

EDITION.

IN the present edition the additions made have increased by about twenty-six pages the size of the work as it stood in the last edition. The new matter contains also twenty five additional illustrations.

Some alterations have been made in Book I.: in making these I have availed myself of an introductory chapter which Prof. Nipher, of the University of Missouri, prepared for the use of his classes, and which he kindly placed at my disposal.

The continued favour with which the work has been received, as a Text-book for Colleges and Schools, and also as a book of reference for the general reader, renders any apology for omissions perhaps unnecessary; it may, however, be as well once more to point out that the book is intended to be a general Elementary Treatise on Physics, and that, while it accordingly aims at giving an account of the most important facts and general laws of all branches of Physics, an attempt to treat completely and exhaustively of any one branch would both be inconsistent with the general plan of the book and impossible within the available space.

STAFF COLLEGE: May 1886.

219787

E. ATKINSON.

EXTRACT FROM ADVERTISEMENT TO THE

SEVENTH EDITION.

I HAVE added an Appendix containing a series of numerical problems and examples in Physics. This Appendix is based upon a similar one contained in the French edition of the work. But I have been able to use only a small proportion of the problems contained in that Appendix, as the interest of the solution was in most cases geometrical or algebraical. Hence I have substituted or added others, which have been so selected as to involve in the solution a knowledge of some definite physical principle.

Such an Appendix has from time to time been urged upon me by teachers and others who use the work. It will, I conceive, be most useful to those students who have not the advantage of regular instruction; affording to them a means of personally testing their knowledge. Such a student should not aim solely at getting a result which numerically agrees with the answer. He should habituate himself to write out at length the several steps by which the result is obtained, so that he may bring clearly before himself the physical principles involved in each stage. Some of the solutions of the problems are therefore worked out at length.

E. A.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

THE Eléments de Physique of Professor GANOT, of which the present work is a translation, has acquired a high reputation as an Introduction to Physical Science. In France it has passed through Nine large editions in little more than as many years, and it has been translated into German and Spanish.

This reputation it doubtless owes to the clearness and conciseness with which the principal physical laws and phenomena are explained, to its methodical arrangement, and to the excellence of its illustrations. In undertaking a translation, I was influenced by the favourable opinion which a previous use of it in teaching had enabled me to form.

I found that its principal defect consisted in its too close adaptation to the French systems of instruction; and accordingly, my chief labour, beyond that of mere translation, has been expended in making such alterations and additions as might render it more useful to the English student.

I have retained throughout the use of the Centigrade thermometer, and in some cases have expressed the smaller linear measures on the metrical system. These systems are now everywhere gaining ground, and an apology is scarcely needed for an innovation which may help to familiarise the English student with their use in the perusal of the larger and more complete works on Physical Science to which this work may serve as an introduction.

ROYAL MILITARY COLLEGE, SANDHURST : 1863.

E. A.