DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY, MINERALOGY AND GEOLOGY
SECOND CLASS
This department embraces two branches of physics not included in its title, namely heat and electricity.
The course begins September 1st of the third academic year and extends throughout this year; exercises, recitations, laboratory work or lectures take place on all week days.
Commencing September 1st, general chemistry, alternating with lessons in heat, occupy the time until the close of the term in December, recitations or other exercises being had daily.
During this term all members of the class whose progress, as shown by their recitations, warrants it, are given laboratory practice in chemistry. This practice begins with chemical manipulations and proceeds in the usual general order of elementary laboratory work. The laboratory exercises are one hour and fifty minutes long. It is generally possible to give all parts of the class some laboratory experience; the amount of this work, however, varies with the aptitude of the student from a few hours to forty-five or fifty hours.
This term closes with an examination upon the essential parts of the entire course, which all cadets who have not shown a required proficiency in daily work must take.
In chemistry the course is a descriptive general one, based upon a concise statement of the more essential principles of chemistry, and includes that class of information deemed most important to non-specialists, together with an accurate and logical treatment of many useful applications of chemistry.
The course in heat is short, but it is a comprehensive elementary course intended to embrace what is most applicable to subsequent work at the academy and what is most useful in general education.
Beginning January 2d the daily exercises alternate between geology, mineralogy, and electricity. This term also closes with an examination, covering the essential parts of the subjects studied during the term, which all cadets who have not shown a required proficiency in daily work must take.