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  • Cooking with the Sun - Creating a Solar Oven
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  • Cooking with the Sun - Creating a Solar Oven
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Teach Engineering Team TeachEngineering
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Most teachers had a fantastic experience with this resource
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Resource Type
  • Lesson 780
Grade level(s)
  • Middle School (6-8) 359
Parent Resource703
TeachEngineering
Posted March 16, 2017
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Cooking with the Sun - Creating a Solar Oven
Cooking with the Sun - Creating a Solar Oven
https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/duk_solaroven_tech_act

PostedWednesday, July 5, 2017 at 10:16 PM

Updated07/07/2017

Student groups are given a set of materials: cardboard, insulating materials, aluminum foil and Plexiglas, and challenged to build solar ovens. The ovens must collect and store as much of the sun's energy as possible. Students experiment with heat transfer through conduction by how well the oven is insulated and radiation by how well it absorbs solar radiation. They test the effectiveness of their designs qualitatively by baking some food and quantitatively by taking periodic temperature measurements and plotting temperature vs. time graphs. To conclude, students think like engineers and analyze the solar oven's strengths and weaknesses compared to conventional ovens.

Student groups are given a set of materials: cardboard, insulating materials, aluminum foil and Plexiglas, and challenged to build solar ovens. The ovens must collect and store as much of the sun's energy as possible. Students experiment with heat transfer through conduction by how well the oven is insulated and radiation by how well it absorbs solar radiation. They test the effectiveness of their designs qualitatively by baking some food and quantitatively by taking periodic temperature measurements and plotting temperature vs. time graphs. To conclude, students think like engineers and analyze the solar oven's strengths and weaknesses compared to conventional ovens.

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  • Maurice Frazier, Old Dominion University
    Adjunct Professor
    Norfolk, VA
    Posted Monday, August 14, 2017 at 4:37 AM
    Great project for middle or high school
    This is an excellent activity to explore with middle or high school students. I have some experiences with this activity and the students always enjoy the process. While in the end they will produce something that they are able to eat, they are learning valuable principles that relate to temperature, heat transfer, and design.
    This is an excellent activity to explore with middle or high school students. I have some experiences with this activity and the students always enjoy the process. While in the end they will produce something that they are able to eat, they are learning valuable principles that relate to temperature, heat transfer, and design.
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  • Anthony Arena
    Posted Thursday, July 6, 2017 at 3:02 PM
    Great End of the Year Activity
    We've done this activity (and different variations of it) as a fun end of year project with our 8th grade Earth Science students as part of a unit on energy and resources. We usually do this as a week or more long project, giving students ample time to research and design (through the engineering design process) their ovens before testing them out. We've found we really need a 90min block period to test them well and try to use foods like chocolate that melt pretty easy so there are signs of progress even on a cloudy day in addition to thermometers. We've also had some rainy days and while Read More
    We've done this activity (and different variations of it) as a fun end of year project with our 8th grade Earth Science students as part of a unit on energy and resources. We usually do this as a week or more long project, giving students ample time to research and design (through the engineering design process) their ovens before testing them out. We've found we really need a 90min block period to test them well and try to use foods like chocolate that melt pretty easy so there are signs of progress even on a cloudy day in addition to thermometers. We've also had some rainy days and while not idea, using heat lamps in a lab works pretty well too. Overall, we've found our kids really get into the design phase more than the testing and it provides a good/fun opportunity to practice team building and the design process.
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