Sputnik crisis
Concerned that traditional physics education at the secondary school level failed to convey a sense of excitement and inquiry, and a way of thinking about physics beyond rote memorization of equations, Zacharias both founded and ran the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC). Begun in 1956, it gained additional funding and emphasis in the wake of the Sputnik crisis of 1957, and within ten years half of the country's high school physics students were using the PSSC curriculum of textbooks and experiments.