SCIENTIFIC APPARATUS.

Evening Star, Issue 12885, 7 August 1906, Page 5

SCIENTIFIC APPARATUS.

Lord Rayleigh, -president of the Royal Society, recently laid the foundation stone of the new science school (which is to cost £18,000) at Dulwich, and in the course of his after remarks said that when he saw the plans of the new building, and had them explained to him, his first feeling was rather one of envy and jealousy When Lord Davey and himself were young there were no such opportunities as were enjoyed by the present generation, and his own scientific work in his early days was done almost surreptitiously. There could be no doubt that if science was taught in a school there must be proper rooms and proper apparatus, otherwise a waste of time was incurred that would be intolerable. There was, however, another side of the question. It was just possible that things might be made too easy, or, at any rate, too mechanical, for tho full advantage of scientific work to be reaped. It was nob »o much a matter of acquiring scientific knowledge as of getting imbued with the scientific spirit. Many experimenters in science had worked with exceedingly imperfect apparatus. Maxwell worked mainly in that way, or, at any rate, during the greater part of his life, and Hughes, the inventor of many important electrical appliances, carried it almost to an urtreme. He visited Hughes once at his lodgings in London, and was shown the iurention of the microphone. A metal box, t stick of sealing- wax, some nails, and a lingle-cell battery made up in a tumbler constituted the material of his invention. Although that amounted almost to an absurdity, he believed that ingenuity and resource were sometimes better developed by work done under some difficulties. Nowadays it was, perhaps, too much the fashion to procure elaborate apparatus, which possibly might be soon out of date, from tho instrument-maker. They were very pretty to look at, but these were not calculated to exercise the mind of the student so much as simpler apparatus would do. In work of the more original bind the early experiments, as a rule, were made with whatever /nighs he at hand, ai.d it was duly, after the work hud been done and a result reached that a more elaborate, and, on the whole, more suitable, apparatus was devised There was one caution tha’j he would bo inclined to impress upon them—there might easily be a tendency to cover too much ground. He thought a little thoroughly learned, and teamed in a natural way—that was to say, without cramming—was more likely to l>c useful than a more extended knowledge over a wider field. It must not be supposed that science was everything, or even the best, for all boys. The literary side should not he neglected and something mote •ven than ordinary classical education was required. He hoped that the new buildings vhich they were shortly to have would prove she advantage which they _ all expected, and that future generations leaving Dulwich would be abl6 to look back upon the time spent in the laboratories, and feel that they had derived great interest and advantage from the work done in them.