The Physical Science Study Committee, usually abbreviated as PSSC, was inaugurated at a 1956 conference at MIT to review introductory physics education and to design, implement, and monitor improvements. It produced major new physics textbooks, instructional movies, and classroom laboratory materials, which were used by high schools around the world during the 1960s and 1970s and beyond.

Original members

* Professor Jerrold Zacharias, chairman * Professor Eric Rogers * Professor Francis L. Friedman * Professor George Gamow * Professor Sanford C. Brown * Professor Victor Weisskopf

Development

In 1956, MIT professors Jerrold Zacharias and Francis Friedman organized a group of university and high school physics educators to reform the teaching of this fundamental science at the secondary level. There was concern that traditional teaching failed to convey a sense of excitement and inquiry, and a way of thinking about physics beyond rote memorization of equations. After the launch of

Sputnik Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...

by the Soviet Union in 1957, the US National Science Foundation greatly increased funding, to radically improve the teaching of science in the country's response to

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

rivalries. Eventually, several hundred physicists, high school teachers, apparatus designers, writers, and editors would become involved with the project. There was a concern that traditional high school physics had devolved to a hodge-podge of

Newtonian mechanics Newton's laws of motion are three basic laws of classical mechanics that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws can be paraphrased as follows: # A body remains at rest, or in motion ...

and other topics that was poorly integrated, with increasing emphasis on the peculiarities of current technology. In contrast, the PSSC approach emphasized the unity of physical inquiry, organized around broad principles such as the

conservation law In physics, a conservation law states that a particular measurable property of an isolated physical system does not change as the system evolves over time. Exact conservation laws include conservation of energy, conservation of linear momentum, c ...

s, rather than a series of disparate equations to be memorized. Details of current technology would be deemphasized, and fewer topics would be covered, to highlight a deep understanding of fundamental principles and the spirit and culture of scientific investigation. Hands-on laboratory work was regarded as an integral part of the course, including open-ended explorations and discovery of new concepts, rather than simple verification of received knowledge. Photographer

Berenice Abbott Berenice Alice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) was an American photographer best known for her portraits of between-the-wars 20th century cultural figures, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and ...

and filmmaker Richard Leacock were recruited to make visual aids to understanding complex phenomena such as wave propagation,

kinematics Kinematics is a subfield of physics, developed in classical mechanics, that describes the Motion (physics), motion of points, Physical object, bodies (objects), and systems of bodies (groups of objects) without considering the forces that cause ...

, and electrical charge. They brought an esthetic sense of visual beauty to illustrations of elegant physical concepts. More than 50 educational movies were made of physical phenomena, including some which were too expensive, dangerous, or infeasible to demonstrate directly in a classroom. Stroboscopic photos made with the assistance of MIT professor

Doc Edgerton Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton (April 6, 1903 – January 4, 1990), also known as Papa Flash, was an American scientist and researcher, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is largely credited with ...

were used to illustrate Newton's laws of motion, including what would become an iconic image of a bouncing ball on the front cover of the textbook. In 1960, the textbook and course materials were first published by

D. C. Heath and Company D.C. Heath and Company was an American publishing company located at 125 Spring Street in Lexington, Massachusetts, specializing in textbooks. History The company was founded in Boston by Edwin Ginn and Daniel Collamore Heath in 1885.D.C Heat ...

(which became a division of Raytheon during 1966–1995), and a series of coordinating laboratory equipment and an experimental handbook was also released. The otherwise-unrelated Heathkit company marketed a series of its standard electronic instruments (e.g.

oscilloscope An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...

s and signal generators), specially modified in some cases, to coordinate with the laboratory handbook. Another company marketed a small table-top water-filled tray which could project an image of wave phenomena, which became an influential educational aid used at both the high school and college levels. Doubleday published a "Science Studies Series" of over 50 small paperback books on related scientific subjects at a high school level, covering topics such as crystal growing, waves and beaches,

subatomic particle In physical sciences, a subatomic particle is a particle that composes an atom. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle can be either a composite particle, which is composed of other particles (for example, a pr ...

s, the universe, and biographies of notable scientists. The non-profit Educational Service Incorporated, which became Education Development Center, was created to continue the work of PSSC. By the 1964–1965 school year, about half the US students enrolled in high school physics (200,000 students, 5000 teachers) were reportedly using the PSSC course materials. However, considerable resistance developed among some teachers to the disruption of traditional methods of teaching. Criticisms ranged from complaints about an informal tone in the text, deferring the use of technical terms, to an attempt to cover too many concepts at too deep an intellectual level for average students.

Legacy

From the beginning, there was an interest in assessing student progress and the overall effectiveness of the new curriculum through a series of 10 tests, to be administered throughout the year.

Books

* PSSC. ''Physics''. 1st Edition 1960. D.C. Heath * Judson B. Cross, John H. Dodge, James A. Walter, Uri Haber-Schaim. ''PSSC Physics''. 3rd edition 1971. D.C. Heath *

Films

* Richard Leacock, director & producer,

Eric M. Rogers Eric M. Rogers (15 August 1902 – 1 July 1990) was a British writer and physics educator. He wrote the 1960 textbook ''Physics for the Inquiring Mind''. The book, subtitled ''The Methods, Nature, and Philosophy of Physical Science'', was based on ...

, lecturer, " Coulomb's Law" * Abraham Morochnik, Donald Ivey and

Patterson Hume James Nairn Patterson "Pat" Hume (17 March 1923 – 9 May 2013) was a Canadian professor and science educator who has been called "Canada's pioneer of computer programming". He was a professor of Physics and of Computer Science at the Univers ...

, '' Frames of Reference'' * Elbert Little, ''Random Events'' * John N. Shive, ''Simple Waves''

References

External links

AAPT Celebrates PSSC's 50th Birthday
Links to more than twenty articles written by instructors of physics.

MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections, summary of fonds. * 1959 fil
Coulomb's Law
by Richard Leacock on the Internet Archive. * 1959 fil
Time and Clocks
by John G. King on the Internet Archive. * 1959 fil
Simple Waves
by

John Shive John Northrup Shive (February 22, 1913 – June 1, 1984) was an American physicist and inventor. He made notable contributions in electronic engineering and solid-state physics during the early days of transistor development at Bell Labora ...