[1] 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.
[4] There was a concern that traditional high school physics had devolved to a hodge-podge of Newtonian mechanics and other topics that was poorly integrated, with increasing emphasis on the peculiarities of current technology.
[6]: 18–19 Photographer Berenice Abbott and filmmaker Richard Leacock were recruited to make visual aids to understanding complex phenomena such as wave propagation, kinematics, and electrical charge.
[1][5][6]: 20 Stroboscopic photos made with the assistance of MIT professor Doc Edgerton 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.
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 particles, the universe, and biographies of notable scientists.