WITH APPLICATIONS BY O. HENRICI, PH.D., LL.D., F.R.S. PROFESSOR OF MECHANICS AND MATHEMATICS AT THE CITY AND GUILDS AND G. C. TURNER, B.Sc. HEAD OF THE MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS DEPARTMENT GOLDSMITHS' INSTITUTE LATE LECTURER AND ASSISTANT AT THE CENTRAL TECHNICAL COLLEGE London: EDWARD ARNOLD [All Rights reserved] THIS PREFACE. HIS little book is based on my lectures to first year students at the City and Guilds Central Technical College. It was originally my intention that its contents should form the first chapters of a book on Vector analysis; but a separate publication of the elementary part makes it possible to enter more fully than could be done in the larger book, into details, and also to include an outline of the Elements of Graphical Statics as an application of the Theory of Rotors. My experience with students who generally come to me direct from school has shown me that such broader treatment is desirable, in order to make them familiar with the new ideas involved. The importance of Vectors as a mathematical instrument has of late been recognised in ever-widening circles in England, and even more on the Continent and in America. They have been known and used everywhere for a long time in Statics as representing Forces, and their inventor was the unknown person who centuries ago discovered the Parallelogram of Forces. On giving the directed quantity, the Vector, a geometrical definition, instead of treating it as merely representing a Force and deriving its properties from |