Soap Bubbles
Full Text
Ch. Boys. Soap Bubbles. Lectures on Capillarity and Capillary Phenomena, Delivered before a Juvenile Audience. Translated by V. M. Pozner, edited by A. P. Afanas’ev. Scientific Book Publishing House, Petrograd, 1919, pp. 190 + 1 unnumbered.
“Soap Bubbles” by Boys hardly needs any special recommendation. This little book long ago won universal recognition and affection. It can rightly be assigned to that classical collection of exemplary popular books on natural science which includes Faraday’s The History of a Candle, Tyndall’s lectures, and so on. And it is not for nothing that the book has been translated into German, French, Polish, and Russian—not for nothing that, in Boys’s own picturesque expression, about two tons of his bubbles have flown out over the world.
That is why the appearance of a new Russian translation of this remarkable little book must be welcomed. As for the edition itself, it deserves approval: the translation is well done, and the appearance is quite satisfactory. In any case, to achieve anything better while maintaining the minimum price would, under present difficult printing conditions, perhaps have been impossible. The color plate appended to the book is executed quite tolerably.
E. Shpol’skii.