WOW! by Storycation

WOW! Experience

Hydraulic Power

Can you make something move using the power of water?

  • Build
  • Explore
A girl in safety glasses at a drill press, both hands steadying a block of wood as the bit comes down, wood shavings piled across the table.
Drilling her own parts. 2022.

It began with one sentence

“It was invented in 1961… and changed the world.”

Shown to campers beside a drawing of a hydraulic arm.

Before anyone answered anything, the children wrote down what they wanted to know.

“How did it change the world?”

“Can I make something that changes the world?”

Two of the questions campers asked on the first day, as Danny recorded them.

A printed workbook page asking for the advantages and disadvantages of closed-ended and open-ended questions, filled in by a child in pencil: “quick, dosient take much time”, “less easy to understand”, “learn more”, “long words are confusing”.
A camper weighing closed questions against open ones. 2022.

Then they built the machine.

Each child measured, marked, drilled and assembled a tabletop wooden arm. Syringes and tubing filled with water made it move.

Danny Delgado and a boy, both seen from behind, at a whiteboard showing a dimensioned drawing of a drilled wooden part marked “2 required”; Danny is showing a size with his fingers.
Reading the drawing together before cutting anything. 2022.
Danny Delgado at a whiteboard covered in dimensioned engineering drawings labelled base block, arm support and control panel, pointing at one detail while a girl stands beside him looking at it.
Before anything is cut, it is drawn. 2022.
Two boys in safety glasses bent over a workbench with pencils, marking measurements onto lengths of wood, with workshop equipment behind them.
Measure, then mark. 2022.
A girl with safety glasses pushed up on her head leaning in close to a red bench vise, studying the small wooden part clamped in it.
Checking her own work at the vise. 2022.

Then reality gets a vote.

Wood spins if it is not held still. A hole is either in the right place or it is not.

“How do I keep this piece of wood still so it doesn’t spin while drilling?”

A finished arm does not always lift as high as it should. Working out why led the group to air in the hydraulic lines, and to why it has to come out.

Two children at a workbench tightening a wooden hand-screw clamp around one small assembly, each with a hand on it.
One clamp, one assembly, two builders. 2022.

Why other people matter.

The questions were written together, so each child heard what the others were curious about. In the workshop, children held parts steady for one another.

As the week went on, campers answered one another’s questions and helped each other adjust their work.

From the field.

A close-up of a printed camp workbook page headed “I said WOW when…”, filled in by a child in pencil: “we saw a airplain unfinished”, with a hand-drawn aeroplane beneath it.
“I said WOW when… we saw a airplain unfinished.” A camper’s own page, 2022.
A group of children gathered under a large illuminated sign reading STEM Center for Innovation, the two at the front holding finished wooden hydraulic arms with clear tubing, two adults standing behind.
The finished arms, held up by the children who built them. 2022.

This Experience comes from a 2022 WOW! Camp called What Hath God Wrought. The building took place at the STEM lab at Hebron Christian Academy, alongside the people who work there.

Each camper kept a workbook. The arms went home on the bus with the children who made them.

What might become visible.

An Experience like this invites children to ask before they are told, and gives them a reason to care about a sixteenth of an inch.

It offers opportunities to practise precision and patience, and it allows Guides to notice whose question moves the whole room forward.

How it was run.

Hydraulic Power was built with specialist partners, a workshop of real tools, and close adult supervision.

That is part of what made it what it was. It also means this is not something Storycation can bring anywhere on request today.

Ways to enter.

Hydraulic Power is not on the current calendar. Current programming shows what is open now. If you have a workshop and people who know it, a conversation is the place to start.

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