A TREATISE ON PHYSICS 114955 BY ANDREW GRAY, LL.D., F.R.S. ་ PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW VOL. I DYNAMICS AND PROPERTIES OF MATTER LONDON J. & A. CHURCHILL 7 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET 1901 PREFACE. My object in the present work is to provide a treatise on physics which may serve for those who, beginning at the elements of the subject, wish to have in one book an account of theoretical and experimental physics which may be sufficient for most practical purposes of scientific and technical education. The undue prominence in our educational system given to examinations, and the over estimation in which the mere passing of examinational tests has been neld, has led to a system of division of a great subject like physics into isolated compartments; but I think it desirable that, from the beginning, those who wish to make a serious study of the subject should have in one book all they require for applications of physical science to the arts and industries. Accordingly I have conceived that no mechanical or electrical engineer would desire to be content with, even at the first, such a view of the subject as can be obtained by the student whose mathematical attainments are the proverbial Two Books of Euclid and Algebra to Quadratic Equations," and therefore I have not scrupled to employ the processes of the Differential and Integral Calculus where the discussion required such analysis. With much that has been written regarding the teaching of mathematics to engineering students I entirely agree, but it is absolutely necessary that all concerned should realise what is undoubtedly the fact that no good progress can be made in the study of engineering or natural philosophy without mathematics, or without persevering and anxious effort on the part of the student, and that even to apprehend the fundamental notions of dynamics, 154 |