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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning’s team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.

Creating sparks for energy

This resource challenges students to design a spectacular human-powered invention for creating the spark which lights the bio-fuel generator of a newly built state-of-the-art, eco-friendly house. The students need to produce a design for their invention and enough evidence to convince the judges that the device will work.

This could include working models of part, or the entire device, diagrams, calculations and results from experiments. The experiments should demonstrate that the device is reliable, for example by successfully repeating a test of the spark-generating method a number of times. The factsheets provide information that may help the students when starting the challenge. The information could be used to give the students an introduction to some of the concepts they might use in their design and to get students to start thinking about how they can demonstrate that their design will work. They also provide some links to other useful and interesting resources.

Curriculum links include: fire, fuel, combustion, energy, energy transfers, power, efficiency, forces, levers, pulleys, hydraulics and electricity.

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