ABSTRACT
The interrogatory, the results of which we are going to analyse, contains a purely verbal part—that which bears upon the floating of boats on the lake. But it is possible to make this part more concrete by playing with bits of wood, with stones, with nails, etc., and by asking the child whether these objects will or will not float, and why they do or do not float. One can also help the child to build little boats in clay, so as to study the relations between form, volume, and the capacity for floating. Above all, when the child says that wood floats because it is light, one can bring forward two equal volumes of wood and of water, and then ask the child to say which will be heavier.
