Energy

The First Law of Thermodynamics says that energy can not be created nor destroyed, but only transform. We made a bow drill to see if we could change muscle energy into heat energy. Actually, all energy comes from the sun, since the food I ate comes from plants, or from animals who eat plants, and plants get their energy from the sun through photosynthesis.

For the bow drill, we took a bow-shaped stick, two blocks, and a straight stick. After stringing the bow-shaped stick, we tried to spin the straight stick with the bow. We got a little bit of heat, but it was hard to do!

The earliest people who made fire this way probably went through a lot of trial and error!