Thames and Kosmos Power House

The thoughtfully designed series of experiments was developed by physicist Uwe Wandrey. Professor Wandrey creatively integrates physical science and technology lessons with the adventure of building a home and living on a remote island. To survive, you must learn how to harness the power of the sun and the wind as well as tap the energy of other physical forces. The storyline follows the experiments in a stepwise fashion. Easy-to-follow activities make it fun to build models and use them for your experiments.

We hope that building small models such as are provided in Power House will inspire you to plan and construct something on a larger scale.

The Power House Experiment Manual is much more than just a set of instructions. The manual is organized around the story of a group of island dwellers who must learn to live sustainably using the resources available to them on their small island. As you read their journal entries and learn of their projects and experiments, you build models of the same projects and conduct the same experiments alongside them.

More than 20 different building projects in one kit!

Power House includes a 96-page full color manual with 70 experiments and 20 building projects, organized into these nine chapters:

The Heat Trap: Construct and experiment with a greenhouse.
The Sun Collector: Collect the sun’s rays to heat water.
The Sun Burners: Make a solar cooker while learning about the principles of light before you cook rice and bake bread.
The Water Vampire: Desalinate water, plant watercress, produce sauerkraut and make chewing gum.
The Heat Absorbers: Learn how heat of evaporation provides cooling, conduct experiments about air humidity, build a hygrometer and test a refrigerator.
Power Plants: Grow beans, make a potted plant feed a candle, harvest sunflower energy, build an oil press, and assemble an oil lamp.
The Energy Converters: Extract electric current from sunlight and metals in acid, build a light telephone, galvanize a nail and split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The Forces of Magnetism: Generate electric current with magnetic fields. Build a current indicator, electric and solar motors, a transfer switch, and a crane. Lift pencils with the sun and learn about levers. Build an electric car.
Wings in the Wind: Build a sail car and learn how wings and sails transform energy. Learn to sail with the wind, by the wind, and against the wind and examine a mixed energy vehicle.