On Wednesday November 14th 2007, St Thomas Primary School in Keith held a Garden Party to officially open their new sensory garden and to turn on the water fountain the children had helped to design and build. The fountain is powered from batteries which are charged from electricity generated by a photovoltaic solar panel and a wind turbine.

So far they have been very impressed with the solar panels which manage to charge the battery even on a cloudy day in winter. The wind turbine is suffering teething problems. We think that it has been sited too close to the roof line (see photo) and is being affected by turbulence.

This is real science (and engineering) in action. The experiment will be repeated, changing one of the variables and evaluated again. That’s how science works! We hope to have an update in coming weeks.

Want to read their story? – Visit the St Thomas blog
http://stthomaskeith.blogspot.com/