ing the academic year requires special emphasis upon summer camps. Several difficulties arise here. The student who depends on his summer earnings for funds with which to pay his way through college finds it difficult to give up his six weeks of the summer to camp training. In the case of some institutions, there is the added difficulty of continuous academic sessions, summer schools and summer shop work or engineering camps. I feel sure that we can in some way reach a solution of this difficulty; perhaps by combining all the camp work into a single three months' period, so as to leave all of the summers free but one, which might, if necessary be the summer after graduation.

These are difficulties with which we are contending and on these and on all other matters I shall be grateful for your advice and help.

THE PROBLEM METHOD AT THE ENGINEERING SCHOOL, U. S. ARMY, CAMP A. A. HUMPHREYS, VA.

BY MAJOR C. C. MORE AND CAPT. W. E. DUCKERING,

U. S. Army.

The primary purpose of The Engineering School at Camp A. A. Humphreys, Va., is to stimulate and encourage the student in the exercise of his power of independent thought, reasoning and judgment, and to increase his ability to cope with new situations when confronted with them in engineering practice, rather than merely to provide him with a fund of engineering information and abstract theory, valuable as the latter are as adjuncts in his training. This purpose was laid down as a guiding principle at the very beginning, by the Chief of Engineers, Major General W. M. Black, and was emphasized continually by Colonel V. P. Peterson, Commandant of The Engineer School. In the half-year ending June, 1919, under the personal direction of Colonel Earl North and with the enthusiastic coöperation of the instructors, this object was attained in the Department of Mechanics of Engineering, by the use of methods similar to those which have been in successful operation during the past six or seven years at the University of Washington, Seattle. (The Washington method of teaching mechanics is the outgrowth of several years of experimentation carried on with the enthusiastic encouragement and support of Professor A. H. Fuller, then dean of the College of Engineering. A brief description of this method is given in an article by W. E. Duckering, in Engineering Education, May, 1917.)

The major portion of the classroom work was devoted to stimulating mental effort on the part of the student, and to training him in practical methods of attacking, analyzing,

and solving engineering problems, instead of being devoted to the usual methods which attempt to cover a set amount of text-book material, and center instruction around that purpose. The student was encouraged to use his own judgment and to make use of ideas which had grown out of his own previous experience. An endeavor was made to lay the foundation for future effort within the student himself, rather than in a text which he could carry under his arm. Every encouragement was offered to the development of what may be called the "engineering mind."

In this method there are two definite phases of the work: First, the phase in which study problems are used, and second, that in which drill or training problems are used. Study problems were designed for purpose of analysis rather than synthesis, with concrete engineering situations used as a basis. Where feasible, the objective ideas corresponding to technical terms used by engineers were presented by means of visits to actual engineering structures. In this manner the students were enabled to more easily visualize and understand the technical language of the engineer. For example, a bridge was visited before the first study problem was taken up. The names and functions of the various parts were discussed, and the question was raised as to the path traversed by a load placed upon the bridge, as it is transmitted through the members of the bridge, from its point of application to the ground. This introduced one of the fundamental principles of engineering thought into the minds of the students at an early stage in their training. This visit to the bridge was not made for the purpose of analyzing that particular structure but to introduce the subject of structures in general. The subsequent class-room work dealt with a different type of bridge and during the course many types of bridges were used in problems, so that the student would not be limited, in his idea of bridges in general, by the one that he happened to inspect first.

In the classroom, the first definite study problem dealt with

a pony-truss span, for which were furnished the usual engineering detail drawings showing all dimensions and sections. Military necessity required that a certain heavy howitzer be taken across the bridge. The question was asked: "Is the bridge, in its present condition, safe for this load?" With the situation before them, the students were turned loose upon the analysis of the problem. The next step, following naturally from the discussion held at the bridge site when inspecting the structure in the field, was to determine how the structure might fail. Each student was required to use his own ideas and make a list of possible sources of failure. These lists were taken up for general discussion, and from this as a starting point the students were led step by step to investigate the various members of the structure. The necessary theoretical analysis was introduced whenever required. The hanger and both chords had purposely been designed too light, thus adding an element of interest to the search for possibilities of failure. When the students discovered these members to be unsafe, they were asked to redesign them in accordance with standard specifications. Naturally, some phases of the analysis seemed too intricate for immediate treatment in the class; but these were easily deferred. For instance, in the case of the floor system, the investigation was carried to the point where the worst positions of the load were decided upon, and sketches were made showing the probable manner in which the planks, stringers and floor beams would break, but the determination of the actual fiber-stresses in these members was deferred temporarily with the understanding that it would be gone into carefully in subsequent discussions. However, the class was led to make recommendations concerning means of strengthening these parts of the bridge in case they were found to be unsafe.

At every step in the analysis of study problems, the many possible assumptions underlying the mathematical computations were always discussed at length by the class, and often two or more assumptions were taken as a basis for mathe

matical analysis before the students were encouraged to make final judgment concerning what appeared to be in line with the best practice. In this manner the student is made to realize that engineering is not an exact science, and the element of judgment plays a very important part in all engineering problems. He also starts his career with a more open mind and a greater capacity for making advances along new lines of engineering thought. He develops a keen interest in engineering literature, especially current engineering periodicals and papers and discussions of engineering societies. Students are not subject to the limitations of a single text, but find it advantageous to refer to several. An inevitable result of this kind of training is the tendency of the student to rely more and more on his own judgment with respect to making assumptions, and in all his work the student shows a greater self-reliance and an increasing desire to do independent thinking.

The chief purpose of the drill problems are to furnish vehicles for training, and for fixing the use and understanding of the fundamental principles firmly in the mind of the student by well-directed repetition. Practically all review work had these purposes in view, though it was possible to use these problems as a means of grading the students and of giving them their section rating. The purpose of these problems, held before the mind of the student, is the opportunity to set up good habits of analysis and work, and to increase by means of carefully organized and well executed computations and sketches, his power to get accurate results and develop speed, while at the same time each problem makes him more at home in the use of the necessary mathematics and mechanics. In order to aid in the accomplishment of these purposes, the major problems were broken up into a large number of subproblems so that the arithmetic might be made easy and so that particular attention might be directed to a great variety of special uses of the fundamental principles. In order that the student would know how to organize his work with a view