When high school physics teachers Glenn Elliot, Stephanie Metz and Bryan Roessel settled into a lab bench in the basement of Rockefeller Hall last week, they found a collection of simple objects in front of them.

A nail and a coil of wire. A magnet. A section of PVC pipe. A battery. And a few open-ended questions about magnetic and electromagnetic force that the objects could help answer.

What they didn't find: step-by-step instructions for completing the task. Instead, the three were armed with a set of intermediate questions; their own ingenuity and problem solving skills; and each other.

The teachers were three of 20 participants in the Center for Nanoscale Systems' Institute for Physics Teachers (CIPT), which wrapped up its ninth year of uniting and training high school physics teachers July 30.

The program attracts physics teachers from around the country for a chance to learn about the latest advances in the field, design and refine new lab experiments, network, and exchange ideas. Teachers who complete the program then have full access to a lending library of laboratory equipment, which is shipped to them at no cost.

"[Physics] is not just a skill; you go through a certain process," said Linda Lagunzad, a physics teaching instructor from New Jersey and one of the program leaders. Teachers who attend CIPT learn to focus on the process as well as on the content, which "gets [the students] genuinely curious scientifically," she said. "And that's very powerful."

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the program (which includes a two-week, two-credit course for first-timers and a one-week workshop for returning teachers) has trained 550 physics teachers in New York state and 1,700 around the country since it launched in 2001.

This year, workshop leaders have an additional task: securing funding for the future. Next year is CIPT's last under the current NSF grant -- and if it is not renewed, the institute -- and the lending library -- could be in jeopardy.

And losing it would have far-reaching consequences, said Julie Nucci, director of education programs and senior research associate at the Center for Nanoscale Systems.

The program "makes for this wonderful mix -- young teachers benefit from talking to seasoned teachers," she said. "Unless you live in a really big district, there's one physics teacher. Who do you talk to? These teachers are an island."

For rural or underserved school districts, access to the lending library can mean the difference between one hands-on lab a week -- or one a month -- and a lab every day, Nucci said. "A lot of teachers really, really rely on us for hardware. We give teachers the ability to bring some really cool stuff into their labs.

"I hear a lot of really worried teachers," Nucci said. "It would absolutely be a shame if we can't keep lending this hardware out. ... This is the most amazing use of tax dollars."

Finding new funding is almost a full-time job in itself -- but keeping the program running would make it well worthwhile, she added. "So I'll keep persevering."