Solar Cooking Lab

Your Mission: To try to boil water by only using solar power and a device of your own design and built by you.

The Rules

  1. Please try to use recycled materials and things around the house to build the apparatus.
  2. Be inventive and creative with the materials and plans.
  3. Make sure you have at least one completed solar cooker
  4. The competition will begin collecting data 10 minutes after class begins and will continue for 90 minutes.

Materials

  1. Household items for building solar cooker
  2. beaker of water

Notes

  1. There are many designs for homemade solar cookers available on the internet. However, not all of them are effective designs. You may build two or three different designs if you wish
  2. Safety Reminders:

a)If you are fortunate, parts of your device may become hot – Be Careful!!

b)Handle your device with caution

c)If your device uses materials with sharp edges (glass, mirrors, etc.) handle the device with caution

d)PLEASE BE CAREFUL and KEEP SAFETY the TOP PRORITY

Procedure

  1. Construct a solar cooking device to boil water. Be sure to design so that it can hold the objects being cooked.
  2. Set-up the cooker in a way to capture the most sunlight
  3. Place one thermometer on the device in the direct sunlight. Place the other thermometer in the device.
  4. Collect surface temperature and water temperature data every 5 minutes for the duration of the experiment
  5. Complete the data chart.

Tuesday – have research and a design turned in (25 points)

Wednesday – Bring materials and begin construction based on design turned in (25 points)

Thursday – complete building and test solar cooker (25 points)

Friday – complete changes needed and test solar cooker (25 points)

Block Final (packet complete and solar panel complete) look at rubric (100 points)
APES Solar Cooking Competition

Data Chart

Time
(Minutes) / Surface Temp.
(degrees C) / Water Temp.
(degrees C)
0--initial
5
10 /
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60

Analysis Chart

Surface / Water
Starting Temperature
(degrees)
Maximum Temperature
(degrees)
Total Temperature Change
(degrees)
Temperature Change / 30 min
(degrees/min)

APES Solar Cooking Competition

Graph

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Don’t forget to label the axis and title your graph and provide a key!

Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper and turn in with your packet

Analysis Questions

  1. Were the patterns of the two graphed lines related in any way? Why or why not?
  2. Were the graphed lines linear? If not, what could explain the pattern that was observed?

Conclusion Questions

  1. Did your water boil? Why or Why not? Would it have reached boiling with more time? How long would it have taken at the increase in temperature you obtained?
  2. Do you think solar cooking is an effective method to heat food? Why or why not?
  3. What could you have done to improve your design? Be specific
  4. Why might this way of cooking be considered “environmentally friendly”? (compare it to traditional cooking fuel sources)