We recently worked with Welsh Water's educational centre to create a model that would show children what happens to water when a surface is changed. The resulting model has various inserts such as trees, grass and buildings to demonstrate surface change, and using a watering can to represent rain, water is poured over the model. The surface water run-off is then collected and measured via taps on the front of the model, the varying amounts of water illustrating the different absorbancy of each surface.

The model has travelled to various educational forums including the National Botanical Gardens in Wales where it was well received, '..the kids thought it was cool and the teachers were very impressed'. It certainly puts paid to the old modelmaking adage 'never work with children or water'!