It happens that I, too, have a copy of Millikan and Gale, a 1920 edition*
with a color frontispiece of the historic Navy-Curtiss No. 4 flying boat
which flew 4513 miles across the Atlantic in 1919. It was in the trash
with those other books I mentioned, and lots more (Leatherbound Riemann
"Partielle Differential-Gleichungen", leatherbound Kohlrausch "Physik",
an 1834 monograph on diffraction with hand colored foldout illustrations,
a beat-up copy of Millikan's "The Electron", et multa alia). Farther on
in the book is a pair of photos of the Vickers-Vimy airplane that made
the first nonstop transatlantic flight, 1890 miles from Newfoundland to
Ireland in 1919. Physics books were interesting, current and attractive
back then. Ludwik got me to look at the book for, I believe, the first
time. Perhaps I'll have more comments later. The book is rich in history,
to my taste, though I don't know how many myths are propagated therein.
Modern books have far too little history in my opinion, and their idea
of being up to date involves ensuring that there is a politically correct
mixture of sexes and races represented in the photographs of students
engaged in rather mundane classroom activities. I agree with Ludwik; this
book has a lot going for it that contemporary books lack. The practical
side is something I miss. When I was a lad (in the late Pleistocene) we
learned about inventors and their inventions, as in this text. Why are
we now trying to teach students about Bernoulli's principle and black
holes instead?
I must point out that work means something different in the vocabularies
of classical mechanics and thermodynamics. In neither case, however, is
work "an energy", as has been more ably discussed elsewhere in the list.
Heat, as used in this book, is also used differently, and it is an energy
(the thermal energy that has been bandied here). I see no virtue in
telling the student something that is not useful and which will produce
a conflict with refined concepts later on. By the way, the unit of energy
used in this text is the gram meter. I don't think I like that, either.
The book also contains at least one horrible misconception. I suggest
you look at article 380. Mechanism of transmission (of sound) in the
text. It suggests that sound is transmitted the way Newton thought it
was, by an orderly successive collisions of molecules, like those
counting ball toys (a picture of one is the figure in the article). I'm
likely to find more of these if I look further.
Thanks, Ludwik. Now I'd better get back to work.
Leigh
*This edition has been revised by a high school teacher, Willard Pyle,
from Morris High School in New York City. You know him, Herb?