TEXT BOOKS. ELEMENTARY STATICS. BY HARVEY GOODWIN, D.D. DEAN OF ELY. NEW EDITION REVISED AND CORRECTED. CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL, AND CO. LONDON: BELL AND DALDY. 1865. 1 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE following treatise is not a mere reprint, but. may be regarded as a new and modified edition of my Elementary Treatise on Statics. The structure of the book has been considerably changed, and I have given up, in deference to the opinion of several friends, the conversational form which I adopted in my former work for purposes of explanation. Doubtless there were disadvantages attaching to the method which I then employed, but I am bound to say, that in abandoning it I have felt that there were also advantages for the loss of which I am not sure that I have been able to compensate. No addition of any importance has been made, with the exception of the appendix to Chapter VII, on the Principle of Virtual Velocities. This appendix can be either read or omitted by the student at the option of his tutor. I have adhered to the division of the subject into experimental and demonstrative Mechanics; I believe that this mode of treatment is very advantageous, and that even those students who are intending to proceed to the higher branches of Mechanics and to higher modes of treatment will find considerable advantage in regarding the elementary principles as in a certain sense capable of experimental demonstration, and in knowing mechanical truths not only as the results of mathematical reasoning, but as truths familiarly exhibited to the eye. The excellent apparatus devised by Professor Willis, and referred to in the note of p. 11, makes the experimental treatment of the subject possible and easy for every Lecture-Room; and I think that the duty of dealing with the science of Mechanics in this way, of course in subordination to a genuine mathematical treatment, cannot be pressed too strongly upon all teachers and lecturers. THE DEANERY, ELY, May, 1861. |