SoTS Physics Lyceum: Princeton
Multi-year physics curriculum. Middle school and high school programs.
A Place Where Physics Is Taught by Expert Physicists
Physics is one of the most elegant and beautiful ways to understand the reality around us. We built the Lyceum so students can encounter the subject the way it deserves to be encountered, not as something to get through, but as something worth loving back.
That shapes how we teach. Physics is best learned by reasoning from physical principles, not by memorizing formulas. Our students learn to derive results rather than retrieve them, to build intuition rather than recognize patterns, to work through a problem they have never seen because they understand the physics, not because they have matched it to a template. This is the Deep Physics methodology, the approach we use across every Lyceum course.
It also shapes what we won’t do. We do not prepare students for AP Physics or other third-party exams; shaping the curriculum around what an outside test happens to measure would compromise what makes the Lyceum work.
And it shapes how we grade. No grade inflation. No curving. A grade reflects what a student actually understands. A student who has learned thermodynamics deserves to be told so, and one who hasn’t shouldn’t be told otherwise.
The Lyceum programs are taught by expert physicists. In our classrooms and seminars, students discuss and work through problems alongside an expert physicist: deriving results from first principles, weighing approaches together, and examining the assumptions behind every step. Dr. Sergey Samsonau leads the Lyceum: PhD in physics, with twenty-five years in physics at depth, including fifteen years teaching in the United States at NYU, CUNY, and PRISMS.
Programs
We teach physics to teenagers with depth and breadth, over time.
The Lyceum is a multi-year physics curriculum. We run separate programs for middle schoolers and for high schoolers: same methodology, same instructors, with material appropriate for each age.
High school (grades 9–12): eight semester-long courses covering the full scope of physics: two semesters of mechanics, then waves and oscillations, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, optics and atomic structure, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. Each course runs one semester (twice-weekly theory plus seminar), year-round across fall, spring, and summer. Largely independent: a student can take one or all eight.
Middle school (grades 7–8): material appropriate for middle school, delivered as two paired semester courses (Mechanics & Thermodynamics; Electricity, Magnetism & Optics) running fall and spring, plus four single-topic summer camps (Mechanics, Thermodynamics, E&M, Optics). Middle schoolers who complete the program arrive at the high school Lyceum already grounded in classical physics.
Physics Tournament Lab: alongside the curriculum, open-ended research on IYPT-style problems for grades 7–12 (advanced). High school students can pursue IYPT competition selection. Enrollment via Princeton Labs.
What Completing the Lyceum Means
A student who follows the curriculum from middle school through the eight high school courses will reason from first principles, have intuition for how nature works, and arrive at university physics well prepared, ready to thrive in introductory courses and continue further if they choose.
- They reason from first principles. Not from a memorized template.
- They have intuition about how nature works. They can predict what should happen before they pick up a formula.
- They can work through problems they have never seen, because they understand the physics, not just the formulas.
Students build the lasting intuition that forms a sound foundation for scientific thinking in any career. Physics is a required subject for medicine, pharmacy, engineering, physical therapy, chemistry, physics, and scientific careers.
More fundamentally: they will have learned what it means to understand a subject deeply. That carries into whatever they study next.
Who This Is For
Students grades 7 through 12 who want to learn physics seriously, and families who recognize that serious physics learning takes time and depth. The Lyceum serves public, private, and homeschool students across both programs: the middle school program for grades 7–8 and the high school program for grades 9–12.
The Lyceum is part of the Society of Teen Scientists, a Princeton-based community for young scientists.