Nuffield Physics: Year V

In the preface to Year V of Nuffield Physics, the authors show how they considered the programme to be suitable as a basis for developing what we now might call scientific literacy, as well as preparing for more advanced study of physics.

The project team argued that a citizen in a scientific world, should neither be afraid of science nor be overawed by it. He, the team wrote, should realise that natural phenomena usually have a rational explanation and that scientific methods can be powerful tools in understanding and controlling man's environment. In other words, he should have an educated person's knowledge of what science is. This, according to the authors of the scheme was the end to which their scheme was directed. In their view, the details of which topics they chose to include was relatively unimportant. The aim was to teach a representative sample of physics, not the whole of it.

Year V topics
1. Motion in an orbit
2. Electrons in orbits
3. The Grand Theory
4. Oscillations and waves
5. Light waves
6. Radioactivity
7. Waves and particles