This week on Principals’ Day, Mr Pittard came to show us a toy that is very special to him. It is the kind of toy children wanted long ago, before they had access to electronic games and computers, and it involved energy transformations, making it highly relevant to our science topic.

Mr Pittard’s toy was a “donkey engine”, actually a working steam engine. He explained how the solid fuel (stored energy) was ignited (heat energy) to boil water, that produced steam which expanded inside the piston to turn a wheel (movement energy) Mr Pittard challenged the students to think about the energy we use in our daily lives, and how this differed from what people used in the past.

Watch the steam engine in operation