SoTS runs two things at the same time, and the name does double duty. The Society is both the whole organization and the half of it that sits outside the Lyceum.
The Society is the international body of young scientists. It publishes a peer-reviewed journal and a popular-science magazine, runs an annual conference, and backs research clubs at students' own schools. None of it is limited to physics: members do their science in the field they chose.
The Physics Lyceum is the school inside the Society. It teaches physics from grade 7 through grade 12 the Deep Physics way, reasoning from first principles rather than memorizing. It also runs the research programs, where a student carries their own question through a full cycle under a mentor.
Most students meet both. More about SoTS.
Membership is open to young scientists aged 19 and under in North and South America, Europe, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. There are no academic prerequisites, and no prior research experience is needed. The Society welcomes teen scientists at every level.
It runs in three steps. First a fit evaluation, a conversation with a person about whether we are right for each other (an evaluation fee applies). Then you do research, in any form, using SoTS resources and tracking your progress. Once a year comes reevaluation: a year with no research to show means membership is not renewed.
Membership carries a Research Profile, publishing in the peer-reviewed journal and the popular science magazine, AI Research Mentor support, the Physics Self-Study Circle, the annual conference, club leadership, webinars, office hours, and quarterly peer presentations.
Real Research means working on authentic questions: unsolved, doable with available resources, and worth solving.
Not exercises with known answers. Not projects designed just to teach a concept. Not questions no one actually cares about.
We push for rigor and curiosity. We help students find questions that fascinate them AND matter beyond the classroom. Students formulate their own questions, design approaches, collect and analyze data, and present findings. The answers are unknown and may not exist. There's no guarantee of success.
The result might confirm a hypothesis, disprove it, or open new questions. That's how science actually works.
We have built a research process specifically designed for middle school, high school, and homeschool students.
Every Lyceum course is taught the Deep Physics way: students reason from first principles and derive results rather than memorizing them.
Theory and seminar discussion intertwine. Students do not just learn a result, they work through the experiments that forced physicists to accept it, and how it shows up in everyday life. The reasoning happens out loud, with classmates, which is why courses run as a cohort.
Deep Physics is primarily algebra-based, and that is a deliberate choice. Algebra keeps the hard part where we want it: what is happening, why it happens, and what follows from it. The depth is in the physics, not in the mathematics used to express it. Where the physics of a course genuinely calls for calculus, a student needs to arrive with it, since the Lyceum teaches physics rather than calculus. Each course states its own math prerequisites on its page.
The methodology builds on four teaching traditions: the French classes préparatoires, the American Physical Science Study Committee, the British Nuffield project, and the Soviet physics-mathematics schools.
The same approach runs in both grade bands, at the depth each one can carry: middle school (grades 7 to 8) and high school (grades 9 to 12).
High school (grades 9 to 12): six classical core courses, Mechanics of Motion, Mechanics of Bodies and Fluids, Waves and Oscillations, Thermodynamics, Electricity & Magnetism, and Geometric Optics, plus four Modern Physics electives, Special Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Fundamental Interactions and Particles, and Physics of the Cosmos. Courses run across three semesters: fall, spring, and summer. Take one, or build the full sequence.
Middle school (grades 7 to 8): single-topic courses in Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Electricity & Magnetism, and Optics.
Courses meet in person in Princeton, New Jersey, and live online for students anywhere. Online sessions are live video rather than recordings, in weekday morning, daytime, and evening slots on Eastern time.
Research: the Lyceum also runs the Research Labs, where a student carries their own question through a full cycle under a mentor. The coursework is physics, but the research reaches past it: labs span artificial intelligence, physics, acoustics and music, optics and perception, environmental science, the social sciences, and interdisciplinary work. One of them, the Physics Tournament lab, works from the problems the IYPT publishes each year rather than from a question of the student's own.
SoTS teaches physics through the Physics Lyceum and runs research programs. Neither one is tutoring: we don't cover homework, test prep, or catching up on school material.
That said, some students searching for a physics tutor may actually want something tutoring doesn't provide: genuine depth. If you took physics and felt it moved too fast or stayed too shallow, and you want to actually understand what's going on rather than just get through the next test, the SoTS Physics Lyceum might be what you're looking for.
The work is hard problems that don't yield easily, with no answer keys and no shortcuts.
Students who develop this foundation will find AP Physics or competition problems more approachable, but that's a side effect, not the goal. The goal is learning to think through hard problems, which is also the foundation for research.
Indirectly. We don't write essays or strategize applications. What we give you is research experience worth writing about, and a Research Profile documenting the questions you pursued, the skills you built, and what you learned, including from projects that didn't work out.
Students who do real research can talk about their work with depth, which comes through in essays and interviews. The larger point is what happens after: arriving at college already knowing how to ask good questions and handle failure means using those four years far more deeply.
Yes. Princeton Labs runs in three delivery formats:
In-person: weekly meetings in Princeton, NJ, open to anyone who can come each week.
Hybrid: same weekly meetings held over Zoom, plus half-day in-person visits in Princeton (3 per Spring or Fall semester, 2 per Summer). Open to students who have already shown they can keep up with weekly research on their own; see Princeton Research Labs for what we look for.
Research Lab: International Format. A year-long delivery format with a two-week opening in Princeton, weekly Zoom across the year, and a one-week closing the following summer. All Research Skills Courses included. See Research Lab: International Format.
In-person and hybrid are the same tuition, $3,500 per semester. The International Format is $16,500 for the year.
Schedule a call. We use it to find the right course and entry point, and enrollment is open for the next semester.
Payment is due at enrollment, with a full refund if we cancel or the minimum cohort size is not formed. The high school and middle school pages carry the schedule, the current pricing, and the refund policy.