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OF

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

BY

SIR WILLIAM THOMSON, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S.,

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW,

AND

PETER GUTHRIE TAIT, M.A.,

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

PART I.

SECOND EDITION.

LIBRARY

ADCNIVERSITY

7 APR 79

MUSEUM
OXFORD

Cambridge:

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

1879

[All Rights reserved]

Cambridge:

PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A.

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PREFACE.

To the first Edition of this work, published in 1872, the following statement was prefixed :—

"The work consists, in great part, of the large-type, or non-mathematical, portion of our Treatise on Natural Philosophy.

"As it is designed more especially for use in Schools and in the junior classes in Universities, the mathematical methods employed are, almost without exception, limited to those of the most elementary geometry, algebra, and trigonometry. Where higher methods are required for an investigation, the reader is, in general, simply referred to our larger work.

"It is particularly interesting to note how many theorems, even among those not ordinarily attacked without the help of the Differential Calculus, have here been found to yield easily to geometrical methods of the most elementary cha

racter.

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Simplification of modes of proof is not merely an indication of advance in our knowledge of a subject, but is also the surest guarantee of readiness for farther progress.

"A large part of Chapter VII is reprinted from a series

of notes of a part of the Glasgow course, drawn up for
Sir W. Thomson by John Ferguson, Esq., and printed for
the use of his students.

"We have had considerable difficulty in compiling this

treatise from the larger work-arising from the necessity for

condensation to a degree almost incompatible with the design

to omit nothing of importance: and we feel that it would

have given us much less trouble and anxiety, and would

probably have ensured a better result, had we written the

volume anew without keeping the larger book constantly

before us. The sole justification of the course we have pur-

sued is that wherever, in the present volume, the student

may feel further information to be desirable, he will have

no difficulty in finding it in the corresponding pages of the

larger work.

"A great portion of the present volume has been in type

since the autumn of 1863, and has been printed for the use
of our classes each autumn since that date."

To this we would now only add that the whole has been
revised, and that we have endeavoured to simplify those
portions which we have found by experience to present
difficulties to our students.

The present edition has been carefully revised by Mr W.
BURNSIDE, of Pembroke College: and an Index, of which we
have recognized the necessity, has been drawn up for us by
Mr SCOTT LANG.

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