MIT Undergraduate Physics Education History

In MIT’s original Scope and Plan, William Barton Rogers called for a general as well as a special/professional applied course of instruction. The latter was to include a “Laboratory of Physics and Mechanics” to teach the manipulation of common physics apparatus.² From 1866 through 1873, physics was offered as part of the Course In General Science and Literature with two years of lectures in mechanics, fluids, and acoustics followed by lectures in heat, optics, electricity, and magnetism. In 1873, Physics was established as a distinct major known as Course VIII and the general physics lectures were delayed to the second year for all students. From 1880 through the 1920, the second year general course consisted of one semester of mechanics, waves, and either optics or electricity followed by a semester of optics and electricity. Between 1890 and 1916, an additional semester focused on heat was required prior to being absorbed into the two-semester sequence.³

By 1868, the third and fourth years of the Course In General Science and Literature involved classes on physical manipulations and physical research which were initially supported by donations and by borrowing equipment from the Lowell Institute.⁴ Edward Charles Pickering developed the final laboratory by cobbling together apparatus at hand and, in 1869, the Physical Laboratory opened featuring experimental setups placed on a series of numbered tables with written instructions. A wall of cards was used to keep track of which experiments were in use. Students were to maintain a lab notebook to be reviewed by instructors. More advanced students as well as outside visitors conducted original research with a focus on plotting and error estimation. Students hoping to become teachers also received instruction on performing and designing lecture demonstrations which became a required class on “Advanced Physics” by 1875.⁵

While the use of laboratory classes had been standard for instruction in chemistry, MIT’s course is claimed to be the first instance of the laboratory method in physics education.⁶ In 1872, the lab was renamed the Rogers Laboratory of Physics in honor of Rogers’s vision. ⁷ In 1873 and 1876, Edward Charles Pickering published two volumes of Elements of Physical Manipulation, which is claimed to be the first physics lab manual published in the United States.⁸ The volumes comprise 200 experiments with instructions for both the student and the instructor attempting to construct the apparatus. The lab was completed by 100 students per year arriving in sections of 15-20 with 25-30 experiments set out with the time to complete an experiment initially averaging 1.8 hours.⁹

One of Pickering’s students, Charles Robert Cross, returned as an instructor in 1870, publishing lecture supplements in 1873¹⁰, and eventually becoming department head 1877 through 1917. Cross was known for giving lectures full of experiments. Under Cross, a course in electrical engineering was established. It was initially called course VIII-B (1882) then course VI (1884) which would ultimately be administered as a separate department in 1902. Cross hired Silas W. Holman to establish electrical and heat measurement labs as well as a Precision of Measurements course.¹¹ He would go on to publish supplemental notes for the laboratories as well as a manifesto entitled “Discussion of the Precision of Measurements”.¹²

In 1900, the department began offering three “options” for physics majors: 1 (a chemistry specialization for future chemistry/math instructors), 2 (a mathematics specialization for mathematical physicists and math instructors), or 3 (a practical track in electrochemistry and later industrial physics in 1937).¹³

In 1907, Daniel Frost Comstock (a 1904 graduate who go on to invent the Technicolor film process) returned from doctoral work under J.J. Thomson and brought Modern Physics into the curriculum, becoming MIT’s first Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1911. He began teaching graduate courses including The Constitution of Matter in the Light of Recent Discovery covering “The nature of negative electricity, and the structure of the atom and molecules” and a course on Radiation. In 1909, he reorganized the advanced undergraduate courses into a “Theoretical Physics” sequence comprising a semester each of analytical mechanics, electrodynamics, optics, and thermodynamics. In 1911, the electrodynamics course addressed the “Principle of Relativity”, only 6 years after Einstein’s publication.¹⁴

After World War I and MIT’s 1916 move to Cambridge, administrators were looking for closer ties to industry but were divided into three factions: those hoping to collaborate on basic scientific research with laboratories at DuPont, General Electric, Bell Labs, etc.; those hoping to train engineers as a managerial class to transform industry; and those hoping for more integrated practical training. The later two won out for the next decade under Richard C. Maclaurin’s 1919 Technology Plan ensuring financial stability but slowing the integration of basic research skills into the curriculum.¹⁵

Noticing graduate students were under-prepared for precision research in physics or industry, Harry M. Goodwin continued the physical laboratory’s focus on uncertainty analysis in experimental reports.¹⁶ In 1917, William Suddards “Pete” Franklin transferred from Lehigh University continuing publication of textbooks and essays including an early compilation of lecture demonstrations.¹⁷ For his service, Franklin who would go on to receive the inaugural Oersted Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers.¹⁸

In 1920, the general course in physics given to all undergraduates was extended to 4 semesters. ¹⁹ By this time, the faculty had begun to supplant the standard texts²⁰ with self-authored versions such as those by Franklin²¹, William Johnson Drisko (whose mechanics and optics exercise books²² were assigned for many years, with an accompanying textbook by 1927), and later Newell Caldwell Page (whose 1928 text on electricity²³ would be used 1928 through 1945 with the arrival of Francis Sears). On a broader note, the Franklin hosted a physics education workshop for The Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education in 1928 featuring talks on the psychology of learning from Harvard’s Walter Dearborn.²⁴

With much expansion including recruitment for a Laboratory of Theoretical Physics and a new spectroscopy lab, the department’s space was at capacity with research needs. The department was annually requesting shop space for educational use and demo storage space by the instrument makers, Elof Benson and Carl Gustav Selig. It would join the neighboring chemistry department to push for new facilities.²⁵

In 1930, Karl Taylor Compton arrived as president of MIT with a mandate from industrial research labs for “introducing ‘a much more powerful element of fundamental science’ into the engineering curricula”.²⁶ As part of this effort, he appointed John Clarke Slater, a prominent theorist²⁷, as Department Head. Around this time, James Rhyne Killian Jr. and Julius Adams Stratton, who would both go on to preside over MIT, transferred from the Department of Electrical Engineering. George Russell Harrison arrived as director of the new spectroscopy laboratory where he would work on an automatic wavelength-measuring machine. Additionally, Robert Jemison Van de Graaff arrived to work on high-voltage research at MIT’s Round Hill research station where he would publicly demonstrate his Van De Graaff generator in 1933. Additional recruits included Nathaniel Herman Frank – and Phillip Morse who had co-authored the first English-language textbook on Quantum Mechanics, dedicated to Karl Taylor Compton.²⁸

Between 1931 and 1933, to support the growing departments of chemistry and physics, MIT constructed Building 6, the George Eastman Research Laboratories, named after the generous donor from the Eastman Kodak company. Research and shop space was added but the large lectures remained in the shared 10-250 space.²⁹ Close ties to Kodak would continue as their researcher, Fred Perrin, would work with Arthur Hardy, Professor of Optics and Photography, to teach the third year major course on modern applications of optics, which would result in another definitive textbook.³⁰

In 1931, visiting lecturer Paul Hermann Scherrer, Stratton’s advisor, delivered demonstration-filled lectures on modern physics inspiring improvements in MIT’s lecture demo catalog which had been lacking since Cross’s retirement in 1917. This led to the hiring of two Curators of Apparatus, Robert Henderson Fletcher and Harry Eric Anderson (who would remain through 1973). These technical staff also carried out full-time management of the freshman laboratory and filled in when a lecturer is absent.³¹ Meanwhile, a group from the American Association of Physics Teachers under Richard Sutton set out to publish a collection of lecture demonstrations collected 1935-1938. From MIT, Philip Morse served as one of 12 collaborating editors and other contributions were submitted by Hans Mueller and Francis Sears, with some diagrams originating in William Franklin’s 1918 collection.³²

A number of changes were made to the general course for all students: 8.01 (Mechanics), 8.02 (Heat), 8.03 (Electricity) and 8.04 (Heat before 1932; Optics and Modern afterwards). In 1934, Professor Nathaniel Frank introduced a more mathematical iteration using his text, Introduction to Mechanics and Heat³³. Meanwhile, Professor John Carl Gaude Wulff established 8.03+ (later called 8.03S and ultimately 8.022), a separate third semester lecture section for students in courses VI, VIII, and XIV which was more mathematical and correlated with 6.00 Principles of Electrical Engineering. Because of Wulff’s 1937 departure to Metallurgy, Frank was placed in charge of 8.03+/8.04+ and asked to decide on a text to be used in the future. Ultimately, he wrote a new book, Introduction to Electricity and Optics³⁴ (1940) which would be used through at least 1964.

Changes also occurred for physics major courses. In 1934, Donald Charles Stockbarger established a physics-specific junior laboratory in Physical Measurements as opposed to the standard Heat Measurement service courses. In 1937, Charles Hawley Cartwright received a peculiar appointment from the President’s Office, being assigned to the second iteration of George Russell Harrison’s 2-term self-directed senior project lab, 8.11/8.12. He used this experience to collaborate on the book Procedures in Experimental Physics³⁵ (1938) by John Strong at Harvard. This would go on to be the main text for Junior Lab in the era of vacuum tube construction and photography. By 1939, Course VIII’s laboratory requirements were revised to remove Organic Chemistry Lab and to include new courses in mechanical and electrical engineering focused on applications for physics majors: 2.855 Machine Tool Laboratory, 6.11 Electrical Engineering Principles, and 6.782 Electrical Engineering Laboratory. Senior theory courses were revised in 1934 around Slater and Frank’s Introduction to Theoretical Physics³⁶.³⁷ Starting in 1934, Robley D. Evans began teaching the first graduate course in nuclear physics often taken by senior physics majors. After 20 years, of teaching the subject, he would go on to publish a corresponding textbook.³⁸

During and after WWII, the department was consistently hosting a incredible number of students. Summer courses were offered to MIT students as part of an accelerated undergraduate program and to others as part of the Army Specialized Training Program and V-12 Navy College Training Program totaling 1850 in 75 recitation sections in summer 1943. After 1945, a large surge of new and returning students arrived pushing enrollment to 1400 students in the general lecture and lab sequence. Work at the wartime Rad Lab shifted into a new Research Laboratory of Electronics while interest in nuclear physics led to the establishment of a Laboratory for Nuclear Science (and Engineering) – both housed in temporary structures.³⁹

With Page’s retirement in 1946, the organization of the the first two years was handed off to Francis Weston Sears who had been teaching the freshman course as described in his textbook Principles of Physics I: Mechanics, Heat, and Sound⁴⁰. In 1946, he published Principles of Physics II: Electricity and Magnetism⁴¹ which he assigned to students to be used for the first 20 out of 30 weeks of the sophomore course leaving 10 weeks for optics. The third book in the series, Principles of Physics III: Optics (1945)⁴² is a rebranding of his earlier Optics (1938)⁴³ but revised with feedback from CUNY colleague Mark Waldo Zemansky. In 1948, the two published College Physics⁴⁴, condensing the content into a two-semester course for students with no calculus background. Their follow-up work, University Physics⁴⁵ a.k.a. “Sears and Zemansky”, would become a canonical university physics textbook. Over the next decade, Sears would regularly teach a summer school for physical science teachers through Westinghouse Educational Foundation. He would go on to receive an Oersted Medal for his contributions.⁴⁶

In 1949, MIT’s faculty Committee on Educational Survey released its final report, dubbed the Lewis Report after its chair. The report re-affirmed MIT’s focus on undergraduate education based on mastering fundamental principles and their creative application to practical problems while also calling for more recognition of teaching.⁴⁷

In 1951, a committee (comprising Jerrold R. Zacharias, Francis L. Friedman, Malcom W.P. Strandberg, George G. Harvey at the overall curriculum level) set out to modernize the content of the intro courses. The first year, being redesigned by Hans Mueller, was to cover optics before students experience calculus in their math course then mechanics followed by a semester on optics, waves, and sound. The second year, being redesigned by Sanborn C. Brown and Francis Bitter, would cover electricity and magnetism followed by a semester of thermodynamics and atomic physics. The advanced version of the sophomore courses for physics, math and electrical engineering majors (8.031/8.041), instead covered electromagnetism and waves as detailed in Bitter’s 1952 books Currents, Fields, and Particles Parts I & II⁴⁸ with the expectation that students would continue on to thermodynamics and atomic physics later. The last semester would later return to discussing optics using Bruno Rossi’s 1957 book, Optics⁴⁹. A third version of the course (8.032/8.042) was offered for architecture, economics, and management majors. ⁵⁰ The final reformulation in this era is an approach initially tested on students retaking 8.01 the used widely which focuses on deriving laws from observations ultimately published in Karl Uno Ingard and William L. Kraushaar’s Introduction to Mechanics, Matter, and Waves. The book features strobe photos from electrical engineering colleague and inventor of practical high-speed photography, Harold “Doc” Edgerton and served as an inspiration for later books like Kleppner and Kolenkow.⁵¹ By 1959, the quantum mechanics offerings had expanded to include two major courses on atomic and nuclear physics 8.05/8.06 plus an alternative introduction, 8.051, based on a book by Slater,⁵² an elective course on atomic and molecular physics, 8.052, and an elective course on Nuclear Physics, 8.053, which would become an influential text by Harald Enge.⁵³

In 1957, the Karl Taylor Compton Laboratories (building 26) opened to house the RLE and LNS as well as the IBM Computation Center under professor Philip Morse. Physics lectures were moved to the new high-capacity Compton Lecture Hall, 26-100, complete with attached lecture demo preparation and storage space.

In 1952, Sanborn C. Brown broadly surveyed introductory teaching labs other universities to find best practices in the large-enrollment post-war era. At that time, the stated goals were not to uncover physical principles or design of experiments, but to gain practical experience in how quantitative laws are tested as well as gain an appreciation for the orders of magnitudes of physical quantities and sources of errors. At the time, students in their first 4 semesters would complete an experiment every 3 weeks, spending 3 hours in class and 6 hours outside.⁵⁴ Broader reviews of physics education would be spurred by the Report of President Eisenhower’s Committee on Education Beyond the High School and with MIT President Killian’s March 1956 ad hoc committee on education of secondary science teachers which found a need for the US to double its number of physical science teachers.⁵⁵

In December 1956, Jerrold R. Zacharias, Francis L. Friedman, and many others held a preliminary meeting of scientists and science educators to address the need for a new secondary physical science curriculum. The group formed the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) and set out to develop a set of coordinated materials: films, textbooks, problem books, and laboratory apparatus which would treat physical science not as a series of facts but as a hands-on experimental subject which would allow students to investigate the nature of physical laws. Zacharias acquired a grant from the National Science Foundation, a landmark move broadening the agency’s scope to support curriculum development in neighboring fields.⁵⁶ With funding from the NSF and MIT, the group of around 60 members now including writers, artists, filmographers, and technicians began work in the summer of 1957. The project would continue to expand to 139 contributors by the September 1957 Preliminary Edition of PSSC Physics Volume I.⁵⁷ Some members began testing the curriculum in their own classrooms while others led summer institutes to train teachers on its contents.

In May 1957, Polaroid inventor Edwin H. Land delivered an influential Arthur D. Little lecture at MIT in which he envisioned the future university as a place where every student pursues a personal research project and where introductory education is in a theater housing recordings from great lecturers. As an example, he showed 3 films including the the first PSSC film on the Pressure of Light.⁵⁸

By 1958, the project had been moved out of MIT into an independent entity, Educational Services, Incorporated (ESI) at a film studio in Watertown. The production of films began with Larry Yust of Encyclopedia Britannica films, but later ones would go on to be directed by filmmaker Richard Leacock. The project continued bringing in individuals including photographer Bernice Abbott, magnet lab tour guide Francis Bitter, many Bell Labs scientists, teachers from selective private high schools, and MIT’s future experimental duo of John G. King and Anthony P. French.⁵⁹

To avoid the expense of research-grade apparatus, the correlated lab experiments were initially designed by James Strickland using simple materials but some were eventually switched to cheaper kits distributed through the Cambridge plant of Macalaster-Bicknell / Macalaster Scientific Corporation. French and King who both carried nostalgia for tinkering would continue this effort, eventually bringing kits into MIT’s classrooms over the next few decades.

Through the next few years of classroom testing and revision, MIT physicists were still at the helm with Jerrold Zacharias acting as the purveyor of funds and spiritual leader and Francis Friedman acting as the primary editor and narrator of the course. Many of the drafts and revisions of the four parts (The Universe/measurement/particles kinematics, Optics/Waves, Mechanics/Dynamics, Electricity and Atomic Structure) were contributed by MIT professors Nathaniel Frank, Uri Haber-Schaim, Bruno Rossi, Herman Feshbach, Arthur Kerman, Roy Weinstein, and Phillip Morrison who would eventually transfer from Cornell.⁶⁰ The curriculum would continue to be revised over the next decade as part of ESI, eventually renamed to the nonprofit Education Development Center (EDC). Eventually, enough content had been made as part of the Advanced Topics supplement that the group would publish a college-level textbook, PSSC College Physics, in 1968.⁶¹

Interest in new physics curricula in the US was furthered in response to the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Zacharias would continue to locate significant funds from the NSF, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc. to the point sums of a quarter-million dollars were referred to as Zachs.⁶² In 1959, both MIT and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) had submitted independent proposals to the NSF to fund a college-level follow-up course to PSSC. The NSF declined both but suggested they collaborate on a series of Conferences which eventually formed the Commission on College Physics, chaired primarily by MIT and PSSC members, to direct efforts. It is believed AAPT submitted the proposal to stop the intrusion of MIT into their domain of college physics – but any animosity ended the following year as MIT’s Franklin Sears was elected president of AAPT.⁶³ With growing interest in a corresponding college-level curriculum in 1961, Charles Kittel of Berkeley along with Phillip Morrison of Cornell recruited a group including fellow PSSC contributor Edward Purcell of Harvard, and initially even Zacharias, to develop the Berkeley Physics Course also published under a NSF grant through ESI.⁶⁴

After the NSF’s rejection, MIT, under the support president Julius Adams Stratton and Dean of Science George R. Harrison, both physicists, funded Francis L. Friedman’s proposal calling to establishing a center with a focus on research and development of undergraduate science teaching.⁶⁵ The resulting Science Teaching Center would focus on courses using experimental teaching methods and design of experiments in addition to developing a new physics course. The second in command, Zacharias, was known for finding urgent educational problems, gathering experts to solve them, and gathering funding for them similar to his past experience with the MIT Radiation Lab’s approach towards national defense issues. After Friedman’s death in 1962, Zacharias led the Center. Leo Sartori was brought in to finish Friedman’s book based on a course to show “physics in the making” through the arguments behind the classical theory of the atom as discussed with Niels Bohr in the year before the PSSC project.⁶⁶ In 1964, Robert I. Hulsizer, a PSSC and Commission on College Physics Collaborator, arrived to direct the STC, pushing its goal towards supporting faculty on education research projects and creating “‘an atmosphere’ in which education research ‘is regarded as a normal aspect of university teaching'”.⁶⁷ In 1967, he renamed the STC as the Education Research Center (ERC) to emphasize its broader scope.

In 1964, Zacharias left to chair the MIT Committee On Curriculum Content Planning. Based on increasing high school preparation from initiatives like PSSC, review of current experiments in the physics subjects in the ERC, and a desire to allow early exploration and specialization, the committee’s recommendations included reducing the physics requirement for all undergraduates from 4 to 2 semesters. It also instated a 3-class science elective requirement which could be met by existing physics courses in addition to recommended requiring an elective self-directed laboratory project course in the first two years such as that being developed by John King. Simultaneously, an hour per week in the lab was replaced by an hour of recitation in 8.01/8.02.⁶⁸

Under the NSF Course Content Improvement Program, the Center worked on its original aim to create Physics: A New Introductory Course (PANIC)⁶⁹. The first three volumes were written by Tony French with contributions from Nathaniel H. Frank, Alvin M. Hudson, and Jack R. Tessman and were used by at least 201 universities. The final volume on Quantum Mechanics co-written by Edwin Taylor in discussion with faculty was developed alongside an associated set of films and experiments while being simultaneously tested in MIT classes as 8.04X. Judah L. Schwartz and Harry Schey who had worked on visualizations at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were brought in to develop computer-generated film loops on quantum mechanics.⁷⁰

PANIC was tested in the ERC-managed courses 8.011 (mechanics, electric fields, and relativity) and 8.021 (magnetism, light, quanta) while being slowly disseminating to the regular 8.01 (particles, mechanics) and 8.02 (relativity, E&M). The consolidation of material was welcomed as the number of students continuing on to 8.03 would drop below half by 1973.⁷¹

John King developed devices for advanced films partly in collaboration with technical instructor Jan Orsula who worked on solder glass techniques for student vacuum tube projects. Immediately following the Zacharias Report, King would go on to establish a student-directed Project Lab course, 8.11/8.12, where pairs of first-year students develop experimental projects meeting in sections of 24 with one faculty, one technical instructor, and two graduate TAs. Around 20% would conclusively achieve their desired result and around 40% would have their project fail in an interesting way.⁷² Over the next decade, the effort would grow to include an interdepartmental Environmental Projects Lab and Orsula would continue his tenure through 1989.⁷³ Meanwhile, his colleague Tony French worked on a walk-in Corridor Lab which opened in 1968 with tables holding introductory experiments designed to showcase a principle both qualitatively and quantitatively within 15 minutes.⁷⁴ By 1973, the Corridor Demonstration lab was expanded under John King with audio descriptions to align the experiments with self-paced courses.⁷⁵ On an intensive front, John King experimented with a Concentrated Study program where students met full-time with their instructor for a one-month condensed version of 8.03.

In 1968, Edwin H. Land donated to MIT for undergraduate education initiatives. Based on growing desire for student research projects and a personal conviction to make research accessible to all students regardless of background, interest, or grades, Margaret MacVicar used these funds to launch the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) in 1969 under the auspices of ERC.⁷⁶ MacVicar led the program for the next 21 years. The program was initially available for credit to encourage faculty to recognize its rigor but was ultimately made available for pay contingent on an evaluation. Currently, 93% of students complete a UROP prior to graduation.⁷⁷

In 1969, Schwartz would work with William Walton on the learning community known as the Unified Science Study Program (USSP) based entirely around students’ compelling personal projects. Schey, after writing the acclaimed book Div, Grad, Curl, and All That⁷⁸, would bring in his early Computer and Laboratory-based Calculus Course (CALC) project to assist USSP students who required calculus knowledge for their projects.⁷⁹

The ERC also supported sociological and psychological studies including Benson Snyder’s “Student Adaptation Study” on the sources of stress on students which led to the influential book The Hidden Curriculum.⁸⁰ Broader efforts were undertaken in 1965 as George R. Valley was appointed by the faculty as Undergraduate Planning Professor. His role was to conduct surveys and reviews of students and propose changes to the Committee on Educational Policy. This involved sitting in on classes and interviewing students about stress, workload, and motivations. A number of resulting recommendations appear in Tony French’s 1968 Report of the CEP Task Force on the Core Program on the availability of multiple versions of introductory science subjects alongside a continued push for project labs.⁸¹ Building on his observations of students, and with input from colleagues including French, King, and MacVicar, Professor George E. Valley developed the Experimental Study Group (ESG), a learning community for self-directed inquiry. Since 1968, ESG’s small individualized courses have been used for pedagogical experiments.⁸²

Another simultaneous effort of the ERC was to develop the self-paced method of teaching known as the Keller Plan into the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) under Ben A. Green⁸³. Naturally, these programs intermingled: Charles Friedman, an ESG alumnus, worked on evaluating PSI while Stanley Hirschi used his PSI study guides in ESG.⁸⁴ The PSI courses involved a series of study guides with ungraded exercises plus section meetings with a faculty member, 1-2 graduate TAs, and 2-3 undergraduate tutors. At one of the sessions, students would take unit quizzes to advance through the course. The method was tested spring 1969-1971 in ERC versions of 8.01/8.02 with 20-100 students (while a simultaneous experiment was done by Earle L. Lomon on a seminar-tutorial style course). Robert Hulsizer expanded the experiment to 8.01 in 1971 where it initially suffered from logistical issues due to the quantity of units to assess (27 quizzes, 2 per student per week, multiple versions of each) and the need to enforce pacing and deadlines on a class of 600.⁸⁵ The method found success in courses up through intermediate quantum mechanics, 8.05X, where students spent a quarter of their time on selected special topics.⁸⁶

MIT’s 1971 Special Task Force on Education recommended creating a Division on Education which ultimately had a focus on formally-funded field research at which point the Center was closed with some projects moved to the non-profit EDC.⁸⁷

Physics offerings were also developing outside the ERC. In 1968, Daniel Kleppner and Robert Kolenkow sat out to make a more conceptually and mathematically demanding version of mechanics for well-prepared students based on the mantra “problems worthy of attack | prove their worth | by fighting back”. The 8.012 course based on the resulting textbook⁸⁸ has continued for over 50 years. By 1972, 8.022, a more mathematical version of E&M was also offered using Purcell’s book⁸⁹ from the Berkeley Physics Course which has also continued through today. In 1973, students were provided a take-home electronics kit.⁹⁰ Following the opening of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, Felix Villars in 1971 introduced a four-semester 8.013-8.043 sequence with a focus on medical and biological applications. Notably, 8.023 retained the teaching of statistical physics prior to electricity and magnetism. By 1973, the course was utilizing the series of books⁹¹ by George Benedek and Felix Villars.⁹² With all the new offerings, a space to prepare lecture demonstrations was established in 1969 behind 6-120 for smaller lecture courses. Simultaneously, a Physics Reading Room was established in building 26 as the IBM Computation Center moved to the newly constructed Information Processing Center in building 39 – which would soon also be available for undergraduate research projects through the Student Information Processing Board.⁹³

1968-1969 also saw a major restructuring of upper-level courses. A new Theoretical Physics Sequence was introduced: analytic and relativistic mechanics (8.06), quantum mechanics and relativistic electrodynamics (8.07), and statistical mechanics (8.08). A number of courses were renumbered: Junior Lab (8.09/8.10->8.13/8.14), senior experimental physics (8.11->8.15), physics project lab (8.14->8.11/8.12), nuclear physics (8.053->8.272), solid state physics (8.44->8.231), and quantum electronics (8.08->8.242) – and a number of new electives were developed including two astrophysics courses at the pre- and post- quantum mechanics levels (8.281 and 8.285).⁹⁴ The new 8.08 was partly created in response to increased undergraduate enrollment in the two-semester graduate statistical mechanics taught by Kerson Huang following his 1963 book on the subject – which was accessible after Philip Morse’s revised version of the undergraduate course.⁹⁵ A large group had also been taking the graduate Introduction to Theoretical Physics sequence based on the books by Morse and Herman Feshbach.⁹⁶

With the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1969, the MIT Black Student Union was formed and worked with MIT’s administration through the Task Force on Educational Opportunity to develop Project Interphase, a summer program for minority students to acclimate to MIT. Initially grad students and eventually faculty lead a physics course which is typically a preview of 8.01, occasionally supplemented by experimental projects.⁹⁷

Tony French would preside over the next era of reform as associate department head 1970-1973 under Viki Weisskopf (who would go on to recieve the Oersted Medal for his expositions)⁹⁸ and then for a decade as academic officer under Herman Feshbach. The department’s continued focus on funding and evaluating education 1983-1988 would continue under department head and later Nobel laureate Jerome I. Friedman.⁹⁹

In 1973, the Department took on a complete review of the undergraduate program and made 37 recommendations. Emphasis was placed on the formal contribution of section instructors to the courses they teach namely through staff meetings, designated coordinators working with the Corridor laboratory staff, and the mandated use of graded homework and thus the suspension of the PSI experiment. The department also began to provide a statement containing learning objectives and policies for switching between versions of physics at Orientation. The ultimate result of this effort involved hiring Judith Bostock as introductory course coordinator. The department also established a Physics Common Room (PCR) to be placed centrally near administration, labs, and tutoring rooms and to host a colloquium series to develop a sense of community. This effort along with the creation of an advisor handbook were led by Margaret MacVicar.¹⁰⁰

With the retirement of Harry Anderson, Tom White was hired along with assistant Tom Albano to maintain and develop lecture demos. At the time, Harry’s duties included the setup and development of demos as well as A/V support for all versions of 8.01-8.04 as well as the intro chemistry courses in 6-120 and 26-100 plus department events.¹⁰¹ The role had significant turnover until Irwin Pless was assigned responsibility for the lecture demonstration group in 1986, discovering the need for an additional instructor and the movement of the workspace from the dungeon-like space behind 26-100 to the physics headquarters and laboratory complex in 4-309 under manager Robert Mark Bessette.¹⁰² In 1979-1980 a list of the lecture demos was started based on Henry Kendall’s 8.012 course with contributions from Robert Hulsizer and Alan Lazarus. In 1987, Hale Bradt produced complete write-ups on 100 8.02 demos based on his teaching as well as Gregory Kern’s 1984 senior thesis recordings of Walter Lewin’s 8.02 lectures – with contributions from Stanislaw Olbert and David Frisch.¹⁰³

In 1973, an additional technical instructor was hired to oversee the corridor lab. Through grants from Dupont and the NSF Instructional Scientific Equipment Program in 1974-1975, the corridor lab constructed apparatus on the experiments of Davisson-Germer, Rutherford, Franck-Hertz, and Mossbauer as well as a mass spectrometer and an NMR experiment.¹⁰⁴ Through the 70s, the completion of corridor lab experiments was dropped as a requirement for 8.01/8.02, leaving only the 175 students in 8.012/8.022 by 1984 when the Corridor Lab was superseded by the Freshman Lab.¹⁰⁵

In 1973, a second faculty position was appointed full-time to Junior Lab, 8.13/8.14, to develop new experiments. Under the suggestion of Lee Grodzins, the third semester of experimental physics, 8.15, was phased out in favor of a rotating faculty thesis coordinator appointment and a rule requiring oral presentations. In 1986, George Clark assumed responsibility for Junior Lab and began the task of modernizing with significant investment and input for faculty: a Macintosh 512 for lab manual editing, PC data acquisition experiments by Martin Deutsch, molecular mechanics of Iodine with a dye laser by Ali Javan, Superconductivity and the Meissner Effect by Clifford Schull, the Josephson effect by Jordan Kirsch, High-resolution CW-NMR by Peter Demos, Shot Noise by Stephan Meyer, alpha decay of radon and beta decay parity violation by Lee Grodzins, 21cm galaxy observations by Bernard Burke, Laser spectroscopy of molecules by Michael Feld.¹⁰⁶

For the period 1973-1978, MIT also hosted the American Journal of Physics under editor Edwin F. Taylor and consulting editor Tony French with assistance at time from Charles Friedman and Ned Frank.¹⁰⁷

In 1964, Philip Morrison had transferred from Cornell after receiving the Oersted Medal for contributions ranging from work with the PSSC and in the STC on an elementary science course. Around 1973, he brought his “Physics for Poets” course as well. Morrison would go on to work on the 1977 version of the monumental film Powers of Ten.¹⁰⁸

In 1985, Tom Greytak introduced 8.204, later 8.044, a sophomore introduction to statistical physics which can be taken alongside quantum mechanics. The course 8.20 on special relativity was also moved to IAP and featured later award-winning simulations by Edwin Taylor. ¹⁰⁹ Further computational work was done in Robert Hulsizer’s freshman seminar in computer data acquisition and analysis and John Negele’s junior/senior computational physics class.¹¹⁰

In 1986, a Committee on the Allocation of Teaching Resources¹¹¹ was established to consider the situation where 35-40% of faculty work as recitation instructors for first year subjects and their teaching commitment is not tracked. Also supported by the Visiting Committee’s recommendation to provide more training on education for graduate students, 4-6 graduate TAs were hired to teach some sections of 8.01 and 8.02. The department also established the William Beuchner Teaching Prize(s) for faculty and students.¹¹² Around this time, a number of student projects were being implemented including the 8.02 Electric Motor building contest (1984-1988, 2002 by Walter Lewin), the 8.012 boomerang contest (circa 1985 by John Dreher), and the 8.01 Shoot-The-Hoop contest (circa 1992 by Michael Feld).¹¹³

In 1984, out of growing desire for students to look at the social context around scientific developments, the Integrated Studies Program (ISP) was born to host courses at the intersection of science and humanities. One of the learning community’s major focuses was hands-on learning as supplemented by physics courses. The program would remain until 2002 when combined with the Mission program to form Terrascope focused on environmental issues.¹¹⁴

In 1985, Tony French was elected president of AAPT. That same year, Margaret MacVicar was appointed to a new office, Dean for Undergraduate Education. Her initiatives included the coordination of lecturers for core courses including exchanging syllabi and quiz dates as well as a new system of course evaluations. She also implemented the linked sections program in which students would be grouped in calculus and physics recitation sections to give a sense of community and also as an experiment in differentiated instruction based on math background. To this end, Tony French developed a Math Diagnostic test in 1991 for student advisory purposes. Students were first shipped a pre-calculus self-assessment and workshops were held at the beginning of the term by Peter Dourmashkin who also taught physics courses for ESG, Interphase, and ISP.¹¹⁵

After collaborating on The Ring of Truth TV program in 1987, Phillip and Phylis Morrison took an interest in John King’s education efforts.¹¹⁶ Ultimately, they contributed to a DIY course in electricity and magnetism using hand-assembled electronics from kits for Interphase 1988¹¹⁷. With funding from the Dean for Undergraduate Education, John King developed it into an alternative pair of intro physics courses, 8.02X and eventually 8.01X with Tony French, where students pairs build experiments outside of class and conduct significant data analysis.¹¹⁸ The students were provided with red toolboxes and could purchase and tool kit – all the kits being assembled by John’s son, Ben King, at King Teaching Associates in Maine. The curriculum was immediately adopted for the course at CalTech as its instructor, Morrison’s first grad student, happened to be visiting MIT – and ultimately a book on the E&M experiments, Zap!, was published.¹¹⁹ In 1993, Tom Greytak developed another set of miniature take-home experiments on waves and optics for 8.03 which would be used over the next 20 years.¹²⁰

Around that time, the MIT Edgerton Center was formed in honor of the hands-on learning of Harold “Doc” Edgerton. John King used this opportunity to continue his Corridor Lab project with a series of short interactive hallway experiments available for the public to operate and reveal a simple principle. The exhibitions in Strobe Alley included three strobe demos built by Edgerton years prior, a strobe charger, a body capacitance meter, the Feynman sprinkler, the Kelvin water dropper, an optical voice link, and the exploding wire – all rugged devices built over 150 hours each by John King, his son’s KTAssociates, affiliate Lee Zamir, Physics’s Eugene DiSalvatore, and/or the Edgerton Center’s Tony Caloggero. By 1996, the installations saw 25 visitors each day.¹²¹ King’s ultimate ambitions, as revealed in his Oersted Medal talk, were to have many departments developing displays of physical phenomena and for the effort to extend to broader public areas.¹²²

In 1992, the department introduced 8.01L, a version of 8.01 which extends into January allowing more time for students to develop and review mathematical background. Ultimately, the Math Diagnostic test during Orientation would be used to recommend a choice between 8.01L, 8.01, and 8.012 to students and their advisors. By 1996, over a hundred students would enroll in 8.01L annually. Around this time, 8.01L students were assigned a weekly half-hour meeting with a tutor as an experiment.¹²³

In 1993, a Committee to Review the Structure of Freshman Year Physics proposed a new format for 8.01 focused on a series of Study Guides¹²⁴ similar to the PSI experiment and borrowing from the contemporaneous method of instruction at Princeton. Students were expected to work through weekly modules in the study guide and attend one demonstration lecture for all students, two recitations in sections of 16, and a weekly quiz on Fridays conducted with each instructor’s two recitation sections combined. This was intended to give students an active role in their learning and more interaction with their faculty section leaders. The course exams were also written by non-teaching faculty to encourage students to perceive their instructors as allies. The study guides were written by Wit Busza, who chaired the committee, and visiting lecturer Susan Cartwright and focused on providing clear expectations/learning objectives – and its examples used a scaffolded “conceptualize, formulate, solve, scrutinize, learn” approach to problem solving.¹²⁵ In 1996, the course was re-evaluated by a faculty committee. A survey comparing New 8.01 to Old 8.02 revealed equal number of students preferring the old and new formats. Students found the new format too dependent on instructor quality – which was offset by the introduction of regular TA hours. Overall, students found keeping up with the course content difficult and thus recitations became what were referred to as “mini-lectures”. Because students had little time for feedback between psets and quizzes, the committee recommended extended the weekly units into the following week. In 1997, Alan Guth took on the next iteration of the course though the format was reverted in 1999. As a supplement to the report, John Belcher included an article on his experiences at physics education conferences attended alongside Tony French in which he recommends following the promising development of studio physics and peer learning concepts for a future iteration.¹²⁶

A group was also formed to plan the inclusion of more modern physics in the undergraduate program in response to the 1992 Visiting Committee. The quantum mechanics sequence was extended to three terms (8.04 – experiments and wave mechanics; 8.05 – formal, matrix mechanics, angular momentum, perturbation, band structures; and 8.059 – time-dependent perturbation theory, particle statistics, modern applications) as was mechanics (8.01; 8.033 – special relativity, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics; and 8.06 or 8.21 over IAP on advanced mechanics). To avoid crowding of students’ schedules, Junior Lab (8.13/8.14) was approved as an institute lab while the Project Lab course was moved to a short IAP offering, 8.122, with students given the choice between 8.21 or 8.122. At this time, 53% of physics students were completing the lab requirement in their junior or senior years and only 40% in the Physics Project Lab.¹²⁷ Junior Lab would go on to meet the Phase II Writing Requirement and later the Communication Intensive in the Major (CI-M) requirement.

In 1995, the long-time Center for Advanced Engineering Studies (CAES), home of video production, professional development, and distance learning initiatives acquired the 1991 Center for Educational Computing Initiatives (CECI) to form the Center for Advanced Educational Services. The center would follow up on the Committee on Education Via Advanced Technologies (EVAT)’s recommendation that MIT invest a million dollars each into 5-10 education projects projects in the near term.¹²⁸

One such project was the Physics Interactive Video Tutor (PIVoT), a website with keyword links between video clips and textbook passages alongside with problems which included hints. The intent was to develop a hypermedia on-demand form of office hours. Development began in 1998 when an anonymous donation of $750k was achieved through $250k of cost-sharing through additional donors. A bulk of the content was extracted from Walter Lewin’s recorded 8.01 homework help sessions and recorded lectures from a newly-equipped lecture hall. As part of a project to develop web accessibility standards with the National Center for Accessible Media, the content was supplemented by captions and narrations. Though PIVoT’s was used at MIT as an outside resource, implementations of the software at RPI and Wellesley were integrated as course assignments. Future usage as a stand-alone course was also speculated.¹²⁹ David Pritchard simultaneously developed a tutoring site known as CyberTutor (later Mastering Physics) based on providing hints as students input symbolic answers. Analysis of this tutoring system led to the REsearch in Learning, Assessing and Tutoring Effectively (RELATE) group focused on education research.¹³⁰

1998 saw a number of administrative developments. The Department appointed Tom Greytak as Associate Department Head for Education and reorganized the Education Committee to consist of 11 members with designated major tasks.¹³¹ Simultaneously, the final report of the MIT Presidential Task Force on Student Life and Learning was released along with the followup Educational Design Project. Both echoed former reports noting that students experience disillusion when arriving to MIT’s environment of “drudgery and requirements” as opposed to developing self-efficacy working on real-world problems. The issues were further exacerbated by a culture of students overloading on subjects while simultaneously facing a need to develop study skills. Recommendations included establishing an abundance of freshman project lab or seminar courses, encouraging/recognizing education experiments, experimenting with pass/no-record policies, and re-establishing coordination between required subjects notably in terms of assignment and exam scheduling.¹³²

In 1999, John Belcher began to propose an ambitious educational experiment for 8.01/8.02 which would integrate multiple studio physics concepts including active learning to improve student engagement, an architectural space for peer instruction, and the re-introduction of experiments which had been phased out for over a decade but could now be designed for computer data analysis. The project began with the development of simulations for students to develop intuition for abstract fields.¹³³

At the turn of the new millennium, John Belcher’s plan was fully developed as the Technology-Enabled Active Learning / Studio Physics Project or simply TEAL. The development of the learning space, a renovation of the physics reading room, was made possible via funding from the Brit and Alex d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in MIT Education and the MIT/Microsoft iCampus Initiative, among others. The TEAL mode of instruction was piloted in Fall 2000 followed by deployment in a dedicated classroom in Fall 2001. 8.02 was converted to TEAL in Spring 2003 followed by 8.01 in Fall 2005. The course began using 17 experiments – some newly purchased and others from converted from 8.01x/8.02x kits – ultimately with 36 copies of each experiment in each room – including the second TEAL room, 32-082, in MIT’s new Stata Center. ¹³⁴

Commitment to TEAL thus marked the phase out of the 8.01x/8.02x course. By 2006, TEAL experiments had replaced freshman/corridor lab experiments in 8.012/8.022, and TEAL’s modular curriculum was being used in 8.01L. For years, Students had mixed opinions which resulted in a 2006-2008 departmental committee to review the new format. They recommended the continuation of TEAL with the deciding factor being its demonstration of the department’s unique commitment to educational experiments.

After many decades of planning to centralize the department, 2007 marked the completion of the “Physics, Department of materials science engineering, Spectroscopy, and Infrastructure (PDSI)” project containing the new Green Center for Physics spanning into the new building 6C. The TEAL support staff and Lecture Demonstration Group were merged into the Technical Services Group (TSG) housed on the second floor of 6C.¹³⁵

Contemporaneously in 2001, MIT’s Council on Educational Technology, as part of MIT’s Lifelong Learning initiative, launched the $11 million dollar platform OpenCourseWare@MIT or simply OCW. Previously recorded lecture content and course materials were released publicly, allowing anyone to follow along with a number of MIT courses.¹³⁶

The following decade involved significant curriculum planning initiatives at the institute-level: the 2006 Task Force on the Undergraduate Educational Commons the 2008 Committee on the Undergraduate Program Subcommittee on the Educational Commons, the 2009 Institute-Wide Planning Task Force, and the 2014 Report of the Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education. Some of these grappled with long-term finances and the prospect of offering modular online education. Others reformulated the General Institute Requirements (GIR)s once again emphasizing the continued development of hands-on project-based courses perhaps containing other skills such as design or computation. A 5-out-of-6 scheme of GIRs was proposed which would allow substitution of 8.02 but the proposal was not implemented. This was in part due to the dissenting view that requirements should be fundamental and flexibility should lie in choosing flavors of courses which contain the same fundamental knowledge.¹³⁷

Since 2000, an alternative degree program known as VIII-B or 8-flex has been offered and selected by a majority of physics majors. The alternative program forgoes the thesis requirement, the second semester of junior lab, and the rigid selection of upper-level physics subjects and instead requires a coherent focus group of three subjects approved by the department flexible major coordinator. The flexibility was created as a result of noting peer institutions with increasing physics enrollment had a much higher fraction of students pursuing broader interests as opposed to attending physics grad school after graduation.¹³⁸

Starting in 2003, MIT shifted from the Phase II Writing Requirement to a Communication Intensive in the Major (CI-M) requirement met by choosing two from a list of approved subjects as opposed to simply submitting a large paper. To prepare for the change, the third semester of quantum mechanics, 8.059, was reorganized into 8.06 requiring each student to write a research paper. In addition to 8.13 and 8.06, a number of alternative CI-M subjects had been made available for flexible majors including those focused on science communication including “Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics in the 20th Century” since 2003 and “Forty-three Orders of Magnitude” since 2012. The joint astronomy course in Earth Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), Observational Techniques of Optical Astronomy, has also been available as a CI-M and Institute Lab.¹³⁹

Seeing the future energy landscape as an urgent complex issue for MIT to tackle, the MIT Energy Initiative was launched in 2006, directed by professor and later U.S. Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz.¹⁴⁰ The desire for scientifically-based public policy also led Bob Jaffe and Wati Taylor to begin teaching a course in 2008 on the Physics of Energy, ultimately published as a definitive textbook in the field of energy studies.¹⁴¹ As additional relativity and tensor content was added to 8.033, the course on Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics was pushed to an IAP course, 8.223, which is required with 8.21 as an alternative.¹⁴²

In 2011, MIT launched the MITx platform, an online learning environment containing complete courses divided into chapters and sequences containing video clips, readings, and problems with real-time answer checking. The followup venture with Harvard, edX, also provided certificates of completion for MIT courses which were now available as a complete paced package to a much larger audience with 1715 completing an 8.02 course in its first offering. This lead them to be termed Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In 2013, the department launched 8.01x, 8.02x, and David Pritchard’s mechanics review course, 8.MReVx – all under the direction of the new PhysicsX Planning Group.¹⁴³

In 2012, MIT created the Office of Digital Learning to centralize MITx, OCW, and media production. On campus, the platform was being deployed for “residential” MITx courses supported by new MITx Fellows. In 2014, 8.01 and 8.02, with support of fellow Saif Rayyan, began using MITx for pre-class assignments and to provide formative feedback with homework answer-checkers. By 2016, the pre-class learning sequences were being redesigned with new lightboard videos and the fellows program was renamed the Digital Learning Lab. Over the next few years, the MITx team worked with Barton Zweibach to develop the quantum sequence 8.04x, 8.05x, and 8.06x which would allow the courses to be offered on the off-semester with a reduced faculty commitment.¹⁴⁴

Around 2018, a number of interdepartmental collaborations arose in the TEAL courses. 8.01 began using atmospheric EAPS demos presented by Glenn Flierl and Bill McKenna to explore the Coriolis force along with the Weather in a Tank experiment initially designed by Lodovica Illari and John Marshall. Later, the courses would pair with the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative to implement problems related to the amazon rainforest, automotive efficiency, windmill efficiency, and the greenhouse effect. From mechanical engineering, a number of problems were collaboratively written and a set of Measurement Instrumentation Control Analysis (MICA) sensors were brought to demonstrate experiments with modern MEMS accelerometers.¹⁴⁵ Jacob White in electrical engineering was asked to help design 8.02 experiments and ultimately Pushpa Prabakar developed a system based on a unified experiment board and a collection of legos, magnets, and 3D-printed rotors to build circuits, a resistor piano, motor, generator, and a system for wireless power transfer. Simultaneously, associated MITx learning sequences were written by former TSG member and Digital Learning Lab Fellow, Alex Shvonski, who would later work on packing the experiments into kits to send to each student during the pandemic. ¹⁴⁶

During the Covid-19 pandemic, a number of changes occurred in our modes of operation. 8.01 and 8.02 lecture content was pushed to pre-class learning sequences, completing the blended-learning flipped classroom model. As students felt they should not be graded on content before learning it in class, Mohamed Abdelhafez created a Second Chance system for students to recover credit by reflecting. Electronic grading with rubrics via Gradescope was fully embraced including the purchase of scanners to be used for future in-person exams. In response to significant social isolation, Ed Bertschinger developed a mentorship program for students which has since expended to higher-level courses. After the pandemic, an associated pedagogy course was offered to create a community of mentors and provide an introduction to the science of learning.

Around 2018, a sophomore level course on the Techniques of Experimental Physics was tested but later dropped due to minimal enrollment. In 2021, Phil Harris developed a course on Data Science in Physics, 8.16, recently also launched as an MITx course. Over the years, a significant amount of General Relativity content had entered 8.033, partly trying to build-up to gravitational waves and LIGO as developed by Rai Weiss and winning the Nobel Prize in 2017. Part of the content was thus offloaded into a new 8.228 Relativity II course over IAP. For IAP 2019, grad student Robert Jones, who had experience with MIT’s math Directed Reading Program (DRP), established the Physics DRP which pairs students and mentors to work through a chosen topic over IAP before delivering a final presentation.

In 2022, the Physics Education Group was formed to combine Junior Lab, the Physics Instructional Resources Lab formerly TSG, and the new MIT Online/Residential Physics Education (MORPHE) consisting of lecturers and Digital Learning Lab fellows. As part of its mission to maintain scholarly knowledge on education, a Physics Education Research journal club was also established.

Since 2022, PEG has continued to focus on physics education research even co-hosting a Professional development for Emerging Education Researchers (PEER) field school in summer 2024. Current efforts include the integration of python computational thinking activities, developing methods to improve exam grading consistency, testing blended learning in new courses, and experimenting with ways to use Large Language Models to summarize student questions.

TODO: 2018 Physics Values Statement; Quantum Information courses; Designing the First Year grading experiments/Task Force on Undergraduate Academic Program; junior lab 2010-2015 redesign;