PARENTS: ARCHITECTURE OF VEHICLES WORKSHOPS ARCHIVE =============================================================================== INTRODUCTION: STEERING PUZZLE. A.Which fundamental physical principle determines architecture of vehicles? 1.Why, by virtue of A, some vehicles such as cars or motorcycles, have their steering devices in the front? 2.Why, by virtue of A, do other ones, such as traditional planes or boats, have them in the back? NOTE: Steering Puzzle is just the entry point to much more general workshop on architecture of vehicles, which will fork into such areas as cars, boats, planes, etc. Here we want to formulate the fundamental principle, governing the architecture of all these vehicles. =============================================================================== COMMENTS: Steering Puzzle was designed as an element of a survey destined to supply data for a study of our education system, its shortcomings and eventual remedies. It was Einstein's opinion and one about which Infeld was crazy, that our education system is completely idiotic: 1.It stands on the head starting and finishing with abstraction without ever confronting students with concrete reality. Now, abstraction can only be "abstracted" from concrete. Otherwise it is empty scholastic. 2.It encompasses extremely complex details, such as partial differential equation in high school while totally neglecting their basic and intuitive meaning. And it's this meaning which is indispensable for understanding the contemporary world, the context in which we live. As to complex details, specialists will learn them from the scratch at the University (again ignoring the wood for trees) and non-specialists will forget them returning to the virgin status, as if they never went to school. Before discussing our puzzle, let me describe another one, which I used in my general survey but did not present here, due to it's level much to stupid for this list. Cars contain head-rests. I asked people about their purpose. Most answered: comfort. Then I explained that they are protection devices against the rabbit punch, caused by your car being hit from behind and yourself being projected backwards with respect to your car. Believe me or not, 50% screamed at me that I'm talking through my hat, that my car being hit from behind projects me frontwards. Just try! Ask non-technical people, house keeping ladies, tiki-taki guys: those doctors and those lawyers and business executives, etc. and you will see for yourself. They forgot all about partial differential equations and rightly so. But they have never been told about intuitive principles of mechanics and of movement's relativity, which is revolting. Infeld suggested the following classification of Puzzle's results: A high school graduate should answer the Puzzle rigorously with simple vector diagrams. A person failing to do so does not deserve a high school diploma even if he/she has a Harvard PHD. A 14 years old student of high school, or anybody of that level of education should answer question 1. correctly, eventually replacing technical terms with current terms of spoken language. A person failing to do so does not deserve a driving license even if he/she has a Harvard PHD. Indeed, road kills more than anything and a guy allowed to run tons of steel against innocent people and incapable to tell the front of his car from its back could be as well allowed to test a machine gun in public places. Results ------- Sample 1 encompassing 400 people with MS or PHD level diplomas, none involved in car design, tuning or competition. Not a single correct answer to both questions. Sample 2 encompassing 50 13-15 years old youngsters hanging around Mountain Race circuits and offering you assistance in adjusting your car to circuit's profile against a bit of driving practice. Only question 1. was asked and 100% answers were correct with a lot of astonishment that such an obvious matter may be questioned. Answers were sometimes rather strangely formulated, but they all expressed the right idea. Comment ------- Due to our education system we are governed, judged, looked after and taught by people who do not deserve a driving license let alone a high school diploma. The system favors and promotes people whose main merit consists in having fathers being born before them and stuffs them with complex, esoteric and useless details without touching the essence of science, art, reason and creativity. It banishes people who lacking right fathers start life with work, who develop practical skills and creativity and who could, like our circuit youngsters become new Ferraris, Gordinis, Issigonis in their respective fields. Conclusion ---------- Aberrant education system seems to be one of major problems of our society. Little if any hope can be attached to education establishment recognizing, let alone solving it because it will most likely adopt the usual self justification and self preservation attitude. Any fair discussion and action may be initiated only in marginal groups such as this workshop. =============================================================================== PARENTS: ARCHITECTURE OF VEHICLES WORKSHOPS ARCHIVE