VOL. 7, NO. 5
COURSE IN INTRODUCTORY CHEMISTRY
1103
be not only the most convenient but the most sane method for a high-school laboratory. The lecture room, with its banked seats, is equipped witha Micropticon, a 16-mm. moving picture machine, a large demonstration table, and display cases. Finally, and more important than all else, the closest cooperation is enjoyed between the superintendent, principal, chemistry teacher, and students. Academic Home Study. In the Aijril issue of the Modern Language Journal notice was taken of an announcement by a self-assembled number of commercial correspondence schools which conduct their ventures for commercial profit. Editorial comment suggested that this announcement paid no attention "to the extension or correspondence divisions of regular academic institutions." This comment seems to have given a wrong impression. To clarify the misunderstanding, additional explanation is due Extension Divisions. The regular academic institutions will not permit themselves t o be associated in any way with these commercial ventures. The extension work of universities, like all education, is organized t o promote enlightenment, t o advance intellectual interest and understanding, and t o further the spirit of leaming-not business profit. Nor does this imply any rdection upon any commercial incentives for profit-for that is of the nature of business, not education. For an entire generation, the University of Chicago has conducted home-study courses, and for almost a quarter of a century the University of Wisconsin has carried on a program of even broader and more inclusive scope, in that vocational as well as academic instruction has been included. The hom-study bulletins of these universities, as well as those of some forty other universities of the highest academic standards which are associated together in the National ~nivers?tyExtension Association, are universally available. I t will be of interest to make note here of the fact that a t the present time a national survey or study of correspondence-study instruction compared with residence teachine is being conducted by the University of Chicago, with the codperation of the national member institutions throughout the country. This is, of course, a study of comespondence-study teaching as conducted in universities of known and accepted standards, and, again, will make no account of the great number of exploiting commercial ventures that take advantage of a contemporary educational development. Records of thousands of students, whose home-study and campus-study achievements stand side hy side, are being studied and are furnishing remarkably illuminating results.-W. H. LIOHTY,Director of Extension Teaching, University of Wisconsin
Copper Won fmm Ore by Electrolysis. Small miners can now recover for the first time practically pure copper directly from sulfide ores by a method just discovered after a year's research by the school of mines and geology a t Washington State College. The method requires cheap hydroelectric power. Present methods of recovering copper ore involve smelting, and electrolysis is used only t o refine the metal. Only one previous attempt, made some 15 years ago, a t obtaining practically pure copper directly from the ore by electrolysis was found in the historical researches undertaken. The details of the method will he published by the college.-Science Sem'ce
