The "no trucks" design challenge: encourage your students to dream first and challenge the boundaries before they settle down to developing a single idea.(Classroom Challenge)

Publication: The Technology Teacher

Publication Date: 01-NOV-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 International Technology Education Association

Introduction

This activity is certainly multi-dimensional and likely to cause some interesting reactions among students. It deals with a transportation system, and changing it, so a certain class of vehicle is literally removed from the roadways.

Large tractor-trailers have a reputation of being involved in rather horrific accidents, often involving death and carnage among smaller passenger vehicles. The giant rigs, according to some transportation experts, may have outlived their usefulness on crowded highways, and perhaps it is time we rethink their presence on the America roadways.

The Challenge

The job of your students is to create unique new ways to move the goods that are now moved via automotive tractor-trailers. And in this endeavor, the students may not develop ideas where conventional tractor-trailer containerized trailers are delivered in any way over the existing highway system. This cargo...

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