Railway Museum and WonderLab - By Ruby

Another main activity that we did in York was visit the Railway Museum and go to the WonderLab. The WonderLab was an interactive science museum for families and it had many different experiments for us to use. We loved this so much that we stayed for four hours! The Railway museum was full of trains. You could go inside the trains, see the engines and look at the controls. But we spent most of our time in the WonderLab.

The first experiment that we looked at in the WonderLab used magnets. We would use a magnet to move a ball through a maze of shapes. After that we tried a different experiment using wind tubes and scarves. There were also lots of activities that included building, like creating a bridge or a foam building that could stand up to an earthquake. We spent lots of time created different structures to see if they would survive a shaking platform.

We also went to a couple of interactive talks while there and learned about how the combustion process powers trains, including demonstrations of experiments about fire and explosions. Hazel volunteered to help with a project and got to hold fire!

After this we looked at more experiments, some of these included a marble track, and a larger track which you had to build your own train wheels! There was also a large air vent that blew air upwards. We created our own designs out of paper and tested how well it would fly. Some worked better than others, like one which would spin as it flew and rise up higher than any others.

After a very long day in the WonderLab we finally decided to go. We had all had a wonderful time and really enjoyed ourselves. It was a great family activity.