Tilbury Trip Year 4

Here are extracts from reports written by Year 4 pupils after their recent visit to Tilbury Energy and Environment Centre.

Thank you to Roshni, Rohan, Robbie, Cherie, Grace, Anamarie, Vivek, Brandon and Eleni for your contributions.

First thing in the morning our teacher took the Register. After a little while Mrs. K came to visit us to say "Have a lovely time at Tilbury". 

The first thing we did was go to the Tilbury Energy Centre and meet the Centre Guides. Their names were Gary, Eric, Peter and Jimmy.  When we went in the building we put our bags in special sections, we had special sections because we had groups named after our four teachers who helped us through the day.

I liked it when we went to the station and looked at all the magnets and I liked it when we watched the flashing video and I liked it when the discoball came on in the middle of the film.

After that we went into a movie room and saw a movie. The movie was about scientists in the early years. The movie told us about people who found out about magnets and electricity, one of those people was Michael Faraday. 

The guides showed us pictures and we had to tell them if they used electricity. Electricity is a type of energy. It moves along wires, when it flows along a wire this is called an electrical current.  Electricity is used to make sound, heat, light and movements.  It can make all kinds of machines work. Electricity can be stored in batteries.  We were divided into four groups and were asked to tell the guide who came round as many things as possible in 3 minutes that used electricity. Our goal was 40 items but we only managed 36. Then we watched a video about Michael Faraday. Michael Faraday was born on September 22, 1791 in Newington, Surrey, England.  He was an English physicist and chemist. A son of a blacksmith, he received only a basic education in a church Sunday school but he went to work as an assistant to Humphry Davy, from whom he learned chemistry. His major contributions were in fields of electricity and magnetism.

We had a little break and they showed us some examples of electricity, gravity and magnetism.  Afterwards we put on a jacket and a helmet and went to Tilbury Power Station. They showed us how they bought in coal from other countries and put it on a conveyer belt so it went into the factory.  Then in the factory the coal was broken into little bits in the furnace. As it went up the pipes the coal turned into steam which is like fuel. This turned the turbines and that was how the factory was run to produce electricity.

Magnets were first discovered by Pharr's in Ancient Greece as shown in the video.  Pharr's rubbed a piece of amber on his clothes and when he put it down it attracted pieces of metal and feathers.  In 1831 Michael Faraday discovered by passing a magnet through a coil of wire he could create an electrical pulse, this was the start of the modern Power Stations.  Present day Power Stations operate in the following way; the office orders the fuel, which is delivered by ship to the grinding mill. This is then ground down and realized to the boiler.  This drives the Turbine and Generator pushing electricity to the transformer then through the pylons into our homes.

After we had our lunch we went over to the Environment Centre to meet Mr. Allen. Mr. Allen gave us some string, sellotape and scissors to make a parachute to play a game.  We had great fun playing the game to see which parachute would reach the ground last. We found out that the bigger the parachute the slower it will go.

We also had to try and make windmills go fast and we had to see how many blades should go on the windmills. We had to use a volt meter.

After our lunch we had a really fun challenge.  The challenge was to make a Blade Turbine. You had 12 blades and 12 holes. You could put in any amount of blades. The important part of the challenge was to make the turbine go very fast. The turbine was attached to a Volt Meter.  The speed of the turbine makes more volts. The team with the highest amount of volts in a minute won. Then the teams that had finished before the time limit had about 5 minutes to make a tower without making it fall.  It was very hard because the tower was made out of paper.

I found out that we need electricity or the world would be boring and I enjoyed doing the parachutes and the singing recorder the most but I also liked the tour to the Power Station when we wore the building gear.  The second favourite thing I did was watch the video about magnets. My third favourite was the water machine.

Then we said our last goodbyes and went back to the coach. When we set off it took us about half an hour to reach school again. It was a great trip and it was made even better because of the team that came along with us.