A wonderful group of year 6 pupils from Mount Stuart Primary School, Cardiff Bay, visited the Active Office recently.
Their visit was part of ENGAGE – ENGineering Animations Engagement – a project led by Cardiff University School of Engineering and funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenious programme.
The aim of the project is to promote environmentalism, sustainability and net-zero emissions, whilst raising awareness of equality, diversity and inclusive engineering.
The pupils learned about generation, storage and use of energy in buildings.
They had a tour of the Active Office with architect Joanna Morgan. Systems integration engineer Luke Ardolino showed the pupils how we measure energy consumption in the building, and they saw it change when they switched lights and heaters on and off.
Using Dr Sarah-Jane Potts‘s Reimagine Energy kits they made miniature playground equipment and generated their own power for an LED light.
And in Dr Jonathon Elvins‘s chemistry experiments they explored how heat can be generated and stored chemically. Everyone was surprised when they added salt to water and saw the temperature go up!
SPECIFIC’s Design Manager Joanna Morgan hosted the visit
“It was great to welcome the pupils from Mount Stuart School. They were a fantastic group and I thoroughly enjoyed showing them around the Active Office. They were keen to learn and had lots of questions.
We were able to introduce some new ideas about renewable energy to them, as well as the different careers that are open to them when they get older.
I hope that taking part in the experiments and seeing the technology in real life will help them to absorb all the information they were given and make it more memorable too.”
Animating their visit
The pupils are now making short animated films with Winding Snake Productions about what they learned.
Their animations will be presented at whole-school assemblies and other community engagement events in a few months’ time. Look out for them online too!
