I’d like to tell you about an Excavator, which is a machine that helps you dig. It has a big cab where you can sit, and that cab turn in any direction. The cab sits on tracks that have wheels inside to help them move. They have tracks instead of wheels to help them move through mud and keep them from slipping and sinking in mud. Attached to the cab is an arm, not like a person’s arm, but an arm with hydraulics. At the end of the arm there is a metal bucket with metal teeth to help dig into the ground. They are sharp, pointy metal teeth – not like your teeth! And it’s a big bucket, like a scoop, not like a little pail bucket. It can dig much faster than you can, dig much deeper, it is much more powerful than you. It’s so much stronger than you that it could even pick you up! There is a piston with a circle on the end that pushes through the cylinder and when it pushes deeper into the cylinder, the bucket pushes deeper into the ground. Oil comes from a long pipe and goes into the cylinder and out a short pipe.

I’m not quite sure I understand how the hydraulics work, so I’d like to tell you instead about Toilets; I learned about these yesterday with Daddy.

A toilet is something you sit on when you need to pee or poo. When you are finished, you flush, and the dirty water is taken away. When you push the handle down, it lifts up the disc and the water in the tank goes down the hole that was under the disc. The water from the tank goes through a pipe and into the toilet bowl, and pushes the dirty water down the drain pipe at the bottom of the toilet bowl. As the water goes down to flush the dirty water away, the ballcock, which floats on the surface of the tank water goes down too. This ballcock is attached to a valve, which opens to let the clean water into the tank. When the tanks is full, the ballcock rises and pushes the valve closed, so no more water can get into the tank. Now, the dirty water has been flushed away, and the tank is full of clean water, ready for the next time.