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. There was concern that traditional teaching failed to convey a sense of excitement and inquiry, and a way of thinking about physics beyond rote memorization of equations. After the launch of
Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957, the US
National Science Foundation greatly increased funding, to radically improve the teaching of science in the country's response to
Cold War rivalries. Eventually, several hundred physicists, high school teachers, apparatus designers, writers, and editors would become involved with the project. However, considerable resistance developed among some teachers to the disruption of traditional methods of teaching. Criticisms ranged from complaints about an informal tone in the text, deferring the use of technical terms, to an attempt to cover too many concepts at too deep an intellectual level for average students. ==Legacy==