Stuck-in-the-Past Va. Physics Texts Getting Online Jolt

Chopra said he was startled to learn that textbooks used in many classrooms cite the cathode ray tube as the main component of the television. Flat screens and the technology that powers them go unaddressed. "We have been actively teaching the wrong stuff," he said.

A dozen physics teachers statewide volunteered to write chapters or develop lab experiments for emerging fields, including biophysics, quantum mechanics and relativity. (And one chapter will address new TV technology, including liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels.) Their timeline: eight to 10 weeks.

"The time scale for government just does not work in this world of innovation," said Jim Batterson, a retired NASA engineer who oversees the project. What will be posted in February does not need to be perfect, he stressed, because other teachers will be able to post updates, corrections and suggestions.

A physics professor from the College of William & Mary will review content before it is posted, and a Montgomery County high school honors physics student, Pranav Gokhale, plans to check it for readability. Gokhale said he learned about the project on the Slashdot blog, which describes itself as "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."

Experts said they hope that digital texts can spur broader changes in the classroom.

Textbooks lend themselves to "a cookbook approach to teaching," said Deborah J. Stipek, dean of the Stanford University School of Education. A more flexible format could encourage teachers to dip in now and then rather than follow along page by page.

The format could also make it easier for teachers to add new perspectives and customize lessons, depending on the students' cultural backgrounds or interests.

But some caution that the Internet is already teeming with lesson plans. Deborah Roudebush, a physics teacher at Oakton High School in Fairfax County, said the flexbook would be more useful if it offers ideas on blending new topics with old ones.

Roudebush agrees that the old standards could use some sprucing up. She spends her summers working with particle physicists on a university campus and brings ideas back to class. And she keeps a muon detector in the back of her room so her students can study the amount of cosmic muons that pass through in different weather conditions and help answer "questions that no one has answers to yet."

Mike Fetsko, a physics teacher in Henrico County, is writing a chapter on particle physics for the flexbook. He said he loves to teach about current research. It grabs attention.

Students "are not necessarily going to be interested in Galileo dropping a rock off a building" to learn about inertia, Fetsko said. "But a black hole -- that is pretty interesting."

Black holes, extra dimensions, dark matter -- all are within the scope of potential discovery in a new 17-mile-long circular particle accelerator near Geneva.

"That is really one of my main goals: to give students experience with ongoing physics research so they don't think physics is dead. So they know there is significantly more to learn," he said.