Enginuity and the Egg-a-Pult Competition

The Ironbridge Gorge Museums site gives details of events that are on. So, having seen what is on, our first port of call was just down the hill to the Coalport China Museum where we did the Bear Hunt for Snowy the Polar Bear, while waiting for the china painting workshop to start at 11 am. Two trinket boxes are now awaiting firing and will be sent through the post. Look here in a couple of weeks for the results.

In the afternoon we went to Little W's favourite place - Enginuity, which is next to the Museum of Iron in Coalbrookdale. It doesn't look like much from the outside...

...but inside it is an Aladdin's Cave of interactive exhibits.

Find out how a little ingenuity will let you pull a 10 ton locomotive or generate electricity from flowing water. Look at familiar objects with new eyes using the giant X ray machine, build an earthquake proof tower and challenge our robotic arm.

The model valley with its dams, canals and various water lifting devices keeps Little W amused for hours.

Here he is generating some electricity to be released through a choice of 8 devices, to illustrate how different machines have different power consumptions.

My favourite is number 8, the flying pigs.

Meanwhile, the girls took part in the Egg-a-Pult competition. For £1, you get a kit of materials to make a catapult for throwing eggs. There are various models on show to copy, if you want, or you can design your own from scratch. We chose to copy one that looked like it might work well. Here they are with their completed machine...

Then you get to try it out. After two practice goes you are given 5 eggs to propel at a target with holes - get them through the holes and you score points. Well, of course they don't use real eggs (which is a shame - you can just imagine the gooey sticky mess that would result), but use ping-pong balls. Here goes...

Result: Score 60 points and a prize of 1 cream egg each. And we got to keep our Egg-a-pult!