An Elementary Treatise On Electricity

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FRAGMENT OF AUTHOR'S PREFACE. THE aim of the following treatise is different from that of my larger treatise on electricity and magnetism. In the larger treatise the reader is supposed to be familiar with the higher mathematical methods which are not used in this book, and his studies are so directed as to give him the power of dealing mathematically with the various phenomena of the science. In this smaller book I have endeavoured to present, in as compact a form as I can, those phenomena which appear to throw light on the theory of electricity, and to use them, each in its place, for the development of electrical ideas in the mind of the reader. In the larger treatise I sometimes made use of methods which I do not think the best in themselves, but without which the student cannot follow the investigations of the founders of the Mathematical Theory of Electricity. I have since become more convinced of the superiority of methods akin to those of Faraday, and have therefore adopted them from the first. In the first two chapters experiments are described which demonstrate the principal facts relating to electric charge considered as a quantity capable of being measured. The third chapter, 'on electric work and energy, ' consists of deductions from these facts. To those who have some acquaintance with the elementary parts of mathematics, this chapter may be useful as tending to make their knowledge more precise. Those who are not so prepared may omit this chapter in their first reading of the book. The fourth chapter describes the electric field, or the region in which electric phenomena are exhibited.

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