Abstract

At a certain stage of advance in any science it may be well to re-examine and perhaps to rearrange its fundamentals. One seeks an ideal, logical order of development, which may or may not be the best pedagogical order. Many a high school beginner in physics has become acquainted with “force” as something that gets in between two bodies of matter and pulls them together or pushes them apart, like himself between two carts or like “magnetism” between two magnets. Whether or not this might ever be a proper view, the mature student of today will consider that for him, a knowledge of accelerations and strains, inter alia, is prerequisite to a knowledge of force.