Activities for Students: Stop This Runaway Truck, Please
Joanne E. Nelson, Margaret Coffey, Edie Huffman · Mathematics Teacher Learning and Teaching PK-12 · 2003
Students are curious about the uses of mathematics in real life. Teachers are always looking for ideas for relating their curricula to their students' curiosity. The authors of this article met one summer at a National Security Agency workshop and developed this activity from a model of a problem that seemed interesting and enjoyable. Little did we know that the challenging mathematics that would develop from the truckescape-ramp problem would illustrate an application of mathematics that has saved countless lives.