Five years ago, South African physicist Mark Horner had just finished giving a talk on wave phenomena at a South African science fair when a group of young students from a poor rural high school came up to him, asking him to proofread the notes they'd taken by hand in a notebook. The scientist was stunned by the comprehensive diligence reflected in the notes, and asked why the students were so attentive. They explained that they had no science texts in their school and that this notebook would be the textbook for the rest of their schoolmates. The result of that interaction? Free High School Science Texts, a project Horner founded, which aims to provide free science and mathematics textbooks for Grades 10 to 12 learners in South Africa.
