AAPT Celebrates PSSC's 50th Birthday

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PSSC: 50 Years Later

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 1960s 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.

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.

Many questions you might ask about PSSC are answered by the analyses, reflections, and recollections of the authors of this AAPT on-line publication assembled to celebrate PSSC’s fiftieth birthday.

PSSC Analyses, Reflections, Recollections

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How did PSSC come to be?

• John Rudolph places PSSC in its historical Cold War context
• Anthony French gives an overview of what PSSC was and did
• Frances Friedman played a major role in getting the first textbook written, tested and published. He died of cancer in his early forties.
  
• Who wrote the books? Who made the movies? Who devised the labs?
• John King recalls movies and movie making
  
• Uri Haber-Schaim developed labs and supporting materials; then he revised and rewrote PSSC Physics up through its seventh (and last) edition.
  
• When the University of Illinois got involved, Ned Goldwasser worked on the Teachers' Guide.

What was it like to be part of the development?

• John Dodge, at age 96, remembers pilot teaching, teaching, and revising PSSC Physics right to the end.
• Cliff Swartz introduced PSSC to Long Island.
• Peter Lindenfeld took it to India.
• Tom Greenslade found it a good summer job.

What was it like to teach PSSC physics?

• John Dodge remembers.
• So do Chris Chiaverina,
• Jim Hicks,
• Robert Stair,
• Jim Nelson,
• Ned Goldwasser,
• and John Layman.
• McLaurin Smith-Williams is still teaching PSSC; he tells about it and its labs.
• Carl Berger taught it first to students, then to teachers.

PSSC had a large impact on students and on prospective and active physics teachers, and on the people who created and disseminated the materials

• Karen Kwitter says it led her to her career in astronomy.
• Jane Bray Nelson describes how it helped her to cross over from teaching chemistry to teaching physics.
• Leon Cooper says it made him a better textbook writer.
• Dick Heckathorn tells how it shaped his teaching.
• So do Jim Nelson, Chris Chiaverina, Jim Hicks, and Robert Stair.
• Arnold Strassenberg describes some of the follow-on projects begot by PSSC.

Why did its influence wane?

• Peter Lindenfeld says it was too hard for students and teachers.
• John Rigden says students and teachers were too lazy for it.
• Carl Berger says PSSC still has a lot of influence; only now it's indirect.

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