The Introductory University Physics Project

The last period of extensive curriculum reform in physics occurred about 30 years ago. The objectives of that earlier effort were sweeping. The high school physics course was an early target, and the Physical Science Study Committee was created to effect its reform. The Commission on College Physics, formed in June 1960, had as its objective the revitalization of the entire undergraduate physics curriculum. In the wake of this period of reform a new genre of introductory textbooks, modeled on the successful textbook authored by David Halliday and Robert Resnick, became standard. These texts followed the more mathematical emphasis favored after World War II but gave more attention to worked-out examples and other pedagogical elements as well as more substantial exercises and problems than was characteristic of their predecessors