With the announcement yesterday that the cost of a first-class stamp will soar to 60p at the end of the month – the biggest price rise for 37 years – Britons will need to think hard to squeeze the maximum value for money from every item they put in the post. To achieve the necessary efficiency savings, every letter, every package, every postcard, will have to do more work.

Inspiration is at hand in this wonderful educational video from London's Science Museum.

Whistling the theme tune from Postman Pat, a Royal Mail worker pushes a package through a letterbox on an industrial estate, triggering a seemingly endless train of energy transfers that starts with the sun and a magnifying glass lighting a fuse and finishes with a tank crushing a mechanical toy dog.

Along the way, potential energy is converted to kinetic energy and back again in a sequence worthy of Wallace and Gromit. There are nine glorious minutes of foaming, sawing, burning and floating, with each manifestation of energy transfer leading to the next. Eggs are broken, a venus flytrap snaps shut, a rocket rises into the air and hot tea melts through what appears to be a chocolate teacup.

And all for the price of a first-class stamp.

Our thanks to the ingenious people at Engineered Arts Ltd for this wonderful video, and to Guardian multimedia editor Jon Dennis for spotting it on the museum's website.