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Re: wheels come off - speed doubles?



Whoops. What an easy way to get a good grade, delete the question and
answer. Somebody might be able to find the original report on Google, but I
don't think it is worthwhile. Somebody at the newspaper or the police
realized the idiocy of the police statement and decided to cover it up.
This is appropriate for literary works, as the author's last thoughts should
be the official published version. It is intellectual dishonesty for a
paper or TV report, unless the web version was published first and then was
changed to reflect the actual final print/broadcast version.

If somebody finds the original version, it might be worthwhile to analyze it
for a common misconception.

Hiding misconceptions tends to keep them alive. They need to be exhibited
and debunked. This is one of the strong lessons from PER. The discrepant
physical event can be useful in helping students confront their existing
ideas and change them. However, this does not happen unless they first
bring to mind the preconceptions before seeing the discrepant event.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


>What on Earth, was this discussion thread all about?
What was this supposed speed doubling?

Truck wheels are big and heavy - they can pull off, they can run on
if the trailer was swinging at the time, and they can bounce up and land
in someone's frontage.
I just don't see the mystery.

The "mystery" is that the highway patrol claims, as if it was a known
fact of physics, that when the wheels come off of a truck in this
(not very well described) fashion, their speed doubles (in this case,
from 55 to 110 mph). This point was included in the article, if you
read it :-)


Oh, very interesting. With apologies to Brian, they've changed the
darn article! I just went and looked at it again. This practice is
becoming more and more prevalent on the web, and I don't like it one
bit.

The article yesterday discussed the highway patrol's contention that
when wheels come off a truck, they double in speed, in this case from
the 55 the truck was alleged to be doing, to 110 when they hit the
house. Not only did they rewrite the article, they redid the video
report as well. On the original video they had filmed a patrolman
interview in which the same speed-doubling claim was asserted. It's
all been excised now.


Stefan Jeglinski