Mechanical Engineering Laboratories —their design, equipment and use: 1 A TIME FOR EXPERIMENT

The equipment of mechanical engineering laboratories in almost any college seems to lag behind that of electrical engineering laboratories both in sophistication and freshness of approach. For example, the enormous impact which electronics is having on mechanical engineering is never even drawn to the attention of thousands of future engineers during their student days: this omission can be serious. Forward‐looking students choose forward‐looking subjects. Traditionally — equipped laboratories encourage traditional — minded teaching. However, a lot is being done. Many mechanical engineering laboratories do have a good range of modern instrumentation and have developed or adapted experiments to make the fullest use of it. This work is exemplified in this month's symposium contributions, and, as with last year's electrical engineering laboratories symposium, other symposiasts discuss laboratory layouts and the organisation and writing up of laboratory work. The symposium, which will continue through the next two issues, has already attracted a great deal of attention, and we hope that it will stimulate further helpful discussion