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Re: PSSC

At 12:04 -0600 10/31/01, Tina Fanetti wrote:

I'm reading the Teaching Physics for the Inquiring mind...

What are PSSC courses?
What are the Berkely physics courses?

PSSC (Physical Sciences Study Course (I think)) was a "reformed" high
school physics course developed in the early sixties with lots of NSF
money. It included a text, a number of really good films on specific
topics, and lots of lab equipment that still occupies space in lab
storerooms. It was developed in response to the "sputnik" scare that
led to any number of new approaches to science teaching.
Unfortunately, as seems to be our style, the long term support for
these efforts soon dried up and things pretty much went back to the
way they were before. There are still some teachers out there who use
some or all of the PSSC materials.

The Berkeley physics course was an introductory university course
designed to be a follow-on to the PSSC for students who had that
course in High School. It included five texts, each covering a
selected subset of the curriculum, and written by different people. I
think the course at UC Berkeley suffered the same fate as the course
at CalTech that gave rise tot he Feynman Lectures Volumes-it was just
too hard for any but the very best prepared and most talented
students.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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