Atomic Playhouse

The students of Little Rock, whose schools are being kept tightly shut by Segregationist Governor Faubus, can attend classes over television this week, but it is doubtful whether credit will be offered for the air courses since there are no provisions for lab work, homework, checking or examinations. But some college students can get credit for a new TV course, provided they are wide awake at 6:30 each weekday morning. Starting Oct. 6, NBC's half-hour Continental Classroom has been approved by 300 colleges and universities (among them: Chicago, Rutgers, N.Y.U., Minnesota), will offer a college-level course on "Atomic Age Physics." For this venture, local schools will be responsible for answering student questions, practical work, exams.

Sponsored by the network, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the Ford Foundation and the Fund for the Advancement of Education, partly financed by American Telephone and Telegraph Co., International Business Machines Corp., Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. and U.S. Steel, the physics course will feature topnotch scientists (first: Dr. James R. Killian Jr.. the President's special assistant for science and technology) as guest speakers, but its main lecturer will be Dr. Harvey E. White, University of California professor of physics. The first semester, "devoted to those aspects of physics necessary to an understanding of atomic and nuclear physics," will deal with kinematics, light, dynamics, electricity, magnetism. The second will emphasize atomic and nuclear physics.

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