PSSC 50th Anniversary

Jul 25, 2006
Syracuse University, Syracuse NY

In 1956 MIT physics professor Jerrold Zacharias formed PSSC, the Physical Sciences Study Committee, and launched what became America's largest effort ever to reshape how physics was taught in high schools.

The impact of PSSC was world wide. By the early 1960's more than twenty percent of all high school teachers of physics were involved in this project.  PSSC produced a major new text book, more than fifty extraordinary movies, a sequence of lab materials that has not been equaled, and a series of short books describing in an engaging and insightful way many different aspects of physics -- crystal growing, waves and beaches, how a TV works, neutrons, electrons, the universe, and the physicists who led the way to deeper understanding of a fascinating variety of phenomena.

The 50th anniversary of the PSSC is being recognized by the AAPT through a series of talks at the 2006 Summer AAPT meeting and an online collection of retrospectives on the project. As you read any piece of this collection, you will see that PSSC had enormous impact on physics teaching, not just in high school but at all levels, and not just in America, but all over the world.

This collection of retrospectives is available at:

https://www.compadre.org/portal/pssc/pssc.cfm

Event Discussions

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Recent general discussion posts

On 2006-07-19, Bruce, ComPADRE Dir posted Event Welcome