Library Workshops Review: Clean Energy

Over our last two workshops, participants explored wind’s fascinating dual nature—learning how moving air can act as both a constructive (pushing) force that builds power and a destructive (pulling) force that moves objects.

June 2025 Workshop: Building a Simple Wind Turbine

Our young engineers stepped up to build working wind turbines, experiencing renewable energy in action first-hand. By assembling the mechanical components themselves, they discovered the physics of energy conversion: wind kinetic energy pushes the blades, spinning an internal motor to generate the electricity that beautifully illuminates a built-in LED.

July 2025 Workshop: Building a Simple Vacuum Cleaner

Things got competitive fast! The room filled with energy as participants raced to clean up tissue scraps from test boxes packed with tricky LEGO obstacles, using mini vacuums they built from scratch. The core engineering challenge? Maintaining strong suction while navigating around the blocks, which pushed them to innovate and solve structural problems on the fly.

It was incredibly rewarding to watch them troubleshoot in real-time—spontaneously adjusting their angles to reach tricky spots or testing different clearance distances the moment their suction weakened.

What We Saw Overall

Participants moved from basic assembly questions like "Where does this go?" to real scientific thinking, asking "What if I change the distance?" or "Why won’t it work backward?" They weren’t just memorising facts, but were instead testing ideas like engineers, making guesses and trying things out through play.

These moments of genuine discovery show how hands-on STEM activities build scientific thinking and real curiosity. This experimental approach is exactly what we want to encourage for future STEM learning.