AAPT Activities

UNDER the auspices of the American Association of Physics Teachers’ Committee on Apparatus, the representatives of 34 companies engaged in manufacturing and supplying physics apparatus met in New York City in June to discuss the production of new physics teaching equipment for colleges and universities. The primary purpose of the meeting was to review the preliminary results of the 1961 AAPT‐AIP survey of apparatus for the teaching of physics. Eighty‐six physics departments in the survey group had replied by the time of the meeting, and their tabulated responses to questions concerning their interest in 80 specific items of new equipment were discussed with the apparatus manufacturers. The preliminary returns indicated an encouraging amount of interest among physics teachers in many of the proposed items, a few of which are now being developed by manufacturers. Other new pieces of apparatus are under consideration, and the AAPT Committee is referring manufacturers to physics departments where prototypes of these items have been developed. A final report on the survey is to be distributed to apparatus manufacturers and physics departments.