Number 182 (Story #2), June 8, 1994 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein ONLY 21% OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ENROLL IN PHYSICS in the U.S., even though 98% of students go to schools that offer physics classes. By comparison, nearly 50% of students take chemistry. "Physics in the High Schools," the second in a series of reports issued by AIP, reveals that only 15% of female students and 10% of black and Hispanic students take physics. About 1% of all students take a second year of physics. In the wake of the 1983 report "Nation at Risk," many states raised their high school requirements from one to two years of science, but this has had little impact on physics enrollment since physics is still traditionally offered only after students take biology and chemistry. In 1989-90, the most recent year sampled in the AIP report, 620,000 high school students were enrolled in physics classes in the U.S. About 18,300 teachers---only 27% of whom had college physics degrees---taught physics. Among these, 96% were white, 2% black, 1% Hispanic, and 1% Asian. (For more information, contact Michael Neuschatz, AIP Statistics Division, 301-209-3077.)