The children immensely enjoyed visiting Linkwater School to listen to and interact with Des Hunt - his analogies of how physics was his inspiration for successes and failures in his writing.
By Beau: Waitaria Bay School went to Linkwater School to go see Des Hunt. Des Hunt is a child books writer who used to be a science teacher.
Des uses science to show children how writing works. Des did a experiment for us, he used a ramp with a smaller ramp connected to it. He put a marble on the small ramp and then let it go. The marble only went a tiny bit up the big ramp, Des said to us, “The marble didn't go up very far so I have to rewrite it”. He put a magnet ⅓ of the way up the bigger ramp and then let the marble go again and it went to the magnet. Des would say to us “Now that the marble is up by the magnet I have hooked the reader in”.
He kept adding marbles and magnets to a ramp until one of the marbles went flying off the end of the ramp. This is how he writes his stories, by adding to them.
By Rydah: The Automatic Mixer
Des Hunt showed us a mixer. It worked by one magnet that was on top of a motor. You get a cup of liquid and put another magnet inside the cup. It mixed the water for us. Des hunt showed us this because it was like adding more ideas to his writing but instead Des Hunt was adding ingredients to the cup of water.