A special issue: Physics for the nonscience major

Today about 75% of college students get their undergraduate degrees without taking a physics course at all. And this figure threatens to become larger as those campuses that still have a physics requirement for their nonscience majors are being accused of using physics as an artificial hurdle to sort out the sheep from the goats (in the way that Latin was once used). At the same time physicists are being impressed daily with the great need to have the public understand and be interested in physics. Gerald Holton of Harvard Project Physics does not overstate the case when, with others, he insists that one of the most urgent tasks facing the physics community is to invent courses and programs that will fully catch the attention of the nonscience student.

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