Allen Kim Lang 17 min read

A nervous new physics teacher, desperate to impress his hardened class, demonstrates a barely-understood phenomenon, and a strip-teaser materializes in first period.

Allen Kim Lang's 1951 story sets young Mr. Tedder against a room of cocksure high-schoolers with a month of study on the mysterious 'Ziegler's effect' and a demonstration that goes spectacularly sideways. Light, funny social SF about a rookie teacher who gets far more than he bargained for. Read it for a genial golden-age comedy that turns a physics class into chaos.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

17 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Robert Fuqua