In 1995, Theeuwes and Godthelp published a paper called "self-explaining roads," in which they argued for the development of a new concept for approaching safe road design. Since this publication, self-explaining roads (SER) became one of the leading principles in road design worldwide. The underlying notion is that roads should be…

Fire and rescue operations in tunnels constitute unusual and complex working environments for first responders. The ability to make correct decisions, based on the tunnel's specific characteristics, demands welltrained incident commanders equipped with sufficient knowledge and skills. The potential catastrophic consequences of tunnel fires have…

Surprisingly, newspapers contain wide-ranging physics topics available for narrative-style teaching in the classroom. Topics of newspaper articles we have covered over the years include physicists (obituaries of Hans Bethe, etc.), art or music that involve physics (color and standing waves), forensics (auto accidents and art forgeries), archeology…

The simple vehicle routing problem (VRP) is a common topic of discussion in introductory operations research/management science courses. The VRP can be framed in a variety of ways, and it can be difficult to solve to optimality. For solution purposes, introductory textbooks demonstrate how Excel's Evolutionary Solver (ES) add-in produces a…

The Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center (REMS) has created a list of resources on the role of K-12 transportation directors in school safety efforts. The list includes the following categories: (1) Preparing for Emergencies on School Buses--(a) Adversarial and Human-Caused Threats; and (b) Technological…

Connecting just four components that compose modern geographic information systems (GIS)--field surveys, dashboards, interactive maps, and story maps--can help foster spatial thinking, critical thinking, and rigorous use of GIS tools and data. The guidelines in this article walk an educator through the creation of a survey in Survey123, mapping…

With the rapid adoption of internet-connected and driver-assist technologies, and the spread of semiautonomous to self-driving cars on roads worldwide, cybersecurity for smart cars is a timely concern and one worth exploring both in the classroom and in the real world. Highly publicized hacks against production cars, and a relatively small number…

Problems of optimization in natural science, technology, economics, and management are of great interest. Students also usually find them intriguing. However, the selection of such problems in introductory undegraduate physics textbooks is very limited and should be broadened. To that end, a model of traffic flow optimization, simple enough for…

A fire alarm interrupted Gregory Powell's class discussion of possible service-learning projects. The experience during the fire drill sparked a service-learning project to improve the safety of pedestrians--students and other members of the community--along streets bordering their public school. It was the beginning of a study not only about…

Whereas some educational designers believe that students should learn new concepts through explorative problem solving within dedicated environments that constrain key parameters of their search and then support their progressive appropriation of empowering disciplinary forms, others are critical of the ultimate efficacy of this discovery-based…

Extension serves an increasingly diverse community, with a number of program participants being new farmers, minority farmers, and low-income farmers. Since the 1980s, Washington State University Skagit County Extension has provided a tractor safety course to older youth farmers, aged 12 to 15. In 2010, a nonprofit farm incubator showed interest…

Radar is a technology that can be used to detect distant objects not visible to the human eye. A predecessor of radar, called the telemobiloscope, was first used to detect ships in the fog in 1904 off the German coast. Many scientists have worked on the development and refinement of radar (Hertz with electromagnetic waves; Popov with determining…