Education. Supervision of the public-school system is in the hands of a board appointed by the legislature. Financial assistance of the towns is provided by a fund derived from the sale of Connecticut's share of land in the Western Reserve and by high-school grants, larger and more generally applicable than in any other state. The minimum school-year covers 36 weeks, the longest required by any state. Enforcement of child-labor laws is under the charge of the state board of education, and attendance laws are rigidly observed. Higher institutions of learning include Yale University, New Haven; Wesleyan University, Middletown; Trinity College, Hartford; Hartford Theological Seminary, Hartford; and Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown. The state maintains normal schools at New Britain, New Haven, Willimantic and Danbury. An agricultural college is maintained at Storrs by funds obtained in part from the U. S. government and in part from the state.
Connect′icut River, the largest in New England, is 450 miles long and is navigable to Hartford. It rises in New Hampshire, forms the boundary line between that state and Vermont, crosses Massachusetts and Connecticut, and enters Long Island Sound. Its many falls afford abundant water-power, and along its whole course it is noted for its beauty.
Connec′tive (in plants). That part of an anther which lies between the pollen-sacs. See Flower.
Con′nellsville, Pa., a borough in the southwest of the state, is the center of the United States coking-coal trade, and has a population of some 8,000. It may be visited by branches of the Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio railroads. In addition to the coking-coal industry, it has a lock-factory, coal-mines, brick-works and pump- and machine-works. Population (1910), 12,845.
Conrad, Timothy Abbott, an American paleontologist, was born in New Jersey in 1803, and died at Trenton, N. J., Aug. 8, 1877. Early in life, his attention was drawn to the geological features and crust-depressions in the western plains, while on surveying expeditions and while acting as paleontologist of the N. Y. geological survey. His published works include Fossil Shells of the Tertiary Formations of North America, New Fresh-Water Shells of the United States and Paleontology of the State of New York.
Conservation of Energy. The fact that energy is conserved or preserved without loss or gain, where to all appearance there are successive loss and gain of energy, is well-shown in the pendulum. By energy we mean capability to do work. When the pendulum is at the height of its swing, it may be said to be stationary. Though it seems then to have no energy, yet, owing to its elevation, it has potential energy, for it has the capacity to move with constant acceleration down to the bottom of its swing. There it is moving at its maximum rate, and has a maximum of kinetic energy or energy of motion, though it has lost the potential or static energy with which it started, which was due to its position and the attraction of the earth. This kinetic energy is enough to carry the pendulum up to a similar position on the other side. There again the kinetic energy has disappeared, for the pendulum is, as it were, still, but the same amount of potential energy is present as at first, for the pendulum is now ready to move as at first, though in the opposite direction. The pendulum, considered as a pendulum, now has potential energy equal in amount to the kinetic energy which it had before; for it has the power to move the same weight (i.e., its own weight) through an equal distance, at the same average rate, as when it was moving at the bottom of its swing. So, at every point in the swing, the loss of potential energy is made up by an equal gain in kinetic energy, and vice versa. It is true that a pendulum will, after a time, stop swinging. But this is because forces outside it are acting upon it. There are the friction of the point on which it swings and the resistance of the air, etc. But the original energy of the pendulum is not lost. For, if we measure the energy of the heat which the friction and the resistance cause and the energy of the other motions of the air, etc. caused by the pendulum while it was swinging, we shall find that in that heat, motion, etc. there is just the. same amount of energy, kinetic or potential, as that with which it started. The pendulum, its fulcrum or point of support, the air, the earth, etc. here form a conservative system. For any system of bodies, where the sum of the energy which its parts possess remains unchanged (through whatever changes, in position or motion, those parts may have passed) is a conservative system. Every system of bodies that so far has been studied with respect to its energies has been found to be a conservative system. If we assume that the universe is fundamentally a system of material bodies and that it obeys, as a whole, the same laws of conservation that we observe in its parts, then the energy of the universe, of course, is always the same. That it always is the same is the theory of the conservation of energy. It is a theory, and not a fact of observation.
The proof of the conservation of energy depends upon our power to change one form of energy into another and to bring them all to one standard of measurement. The common standard of measurement for all energies is the erg, which is based upon
