I've been thinking about planning some activities to take advantage of the "one block a day" timetable we have at the end of term. This means that my students will have physics from 08:30 until 14:30. That's quite along time to be doing one subject which presents some challenges as well as opportunities. I started with some criteria:

• Must cover a reasonable chunk of the syllabus.
• varied activities.
• Fun.
• Group work.

Topic 8, energy production lends itself well to this approach but it requires knowledge of a lot of areas of the syllabus and this block day is going to be at the end of the first year. This is not necessarily a problem, students will have to learn the bits that they need to know as they proceed through the day, in that way more of the core will be covered. The main area of missing knowledge is Electricity and magnetism. To understand how a power station works they will have to know the basics of electrical circuits.

• Current, resistance and voltage.
• Electrical power.
• Ohm's law.
• Flux density.
• Faraday's and Lenz's laws.

I'm thinking along the lines of students building a model hydro station or wind turbine. We have done both as group 4 projects but would work better with more of a physics focus. There are three main components to the design, the energy source,the turbine and the generator. I also have a PASCO model that can be used to compare with. How close can you get to PASCO?

It was so expensive I feel duty bound to use it.

They are not going to get a full understanding of electricity and magnetism in 6 hours but they don't need to know everything to be able to design a simple generator. What they need to know is:

• Current is flow of charge, is measures in Amps using an ammeter.
• Voltage between A and B is the energy per unit charge dissipated when a current flows from A to B.
• Electrical power = VI
• Resistance = the ratio of voltage/ current, this is also Ohm's law.
• The flux density is related to the strength of magnetic field.
• When the flux enclosed by a circuit changes an EMF is induced in the circuit, the size of this EMF is related to the rate of change of flux. The direction of induced current opposes the change producing it.

So, students need to design an arrangement of magnets and coils to maximise the rate of flux cut, lots to think about.

The turbine design is also complex but the basic physics concept is simpler. Energy is converted from KE in the wind or PE in the water to KE of the turbine. Might be worth introducing Bernoulli here so they can understand how to change the speed of the water / air.

I could just leave the whole thing open, give them the task to design a power station and see how they get on. The problem is that the would most likely go onto the Internet and search "how to make a model hydro power station" and they would find plans. But I don't want them to just build a model I want them to learn some physics so I'm going to be much more structured. No Internet, I'll print the worksheets on paper!

Here's the plan:

Introducing the theory

Start the day with a series of activities introducing the basics of electromagnetism and fluid flow so that students can make a sensible attempt at designing a generator and turbine. Working in pairs students will complete the following activities

Electromagnetism

Set up a simple circuit to light an LED and bulb.

Measure V and I with a multimeter, calculate R

Measure V and I with probe.

Measure AC signals with multimeter and sensor

Investigate the field strength of a variety of magnets with a magnetic field probe.

Push magnet in and out of self wound coil and measure induced EMF. Deduce relationship between Number of turns, area, speed and flux density.

Investigate the EMF induced in different examples of moving coil and magnet to find the most efficient.

Investigate the conversion of energy from mechanical to electrical using a magnet on a spring.

Investigate the EMF induced by a small generator.

Fluid flow

Investigate the relationship between the speed of fluid flowing out of a pipe and the height of reservoir, diameter of pipe, angle of a bend in the pipe and length of pipe.

Investigate the air speed and distance from a fan.

These will not be open ended investigations, students will be asked to find the answers to a series of specific questions, this should take about 1 hour.

Building the model

The hydro power turbine will be built out of plastic bottles, cartons, cups, straws, spoons etc. The wind turbine will be made out of paper and cardboard. There will also be a supply of enamelled copper wire and a variety of Neodymium magnets for the generator. Oh, and a glue gun.

The aim is to light one LED.

My school is situated in the mountains and there are several small rivers flowing through the campus. It might also be interesting to estimate the amount of energy that could be generated from these rivers.