The weather didn't look like it was going to cooperate, but we decided to forge forward. If nothing else we would get the ovens build! Right as we finished building the ovens, the SUN CAME OUT! It was incredibly windy, but we decided to try to cook the food anyway!
Building the ovens:
Cooking:
Our conclusions:
Once we had attempted to cook our food, I asked the kids a few questions. The most important one was "what would have made our ovens work better?"
Cade: Less wind
Sophia: Hotter day
Jacob: Sealing the plastic tighter might make it get warmer inside.
Grant: Electricity and a real oven....I know, I doubt a career in science is in his future!
The items that seemed to cook the best were english muffin pizzas and mexican smores. Hotdogs, although they smelled like they were cooking, were barely lukewarm after almost an hour. Our pizzas were not at all warm and the cheese hardly melted.
Interesting solar oven facts:
Who made the first solar cooker? The first solar cooker we know of was invented by Horace de Saussure, a Swiss naturalist experimenting as early as 1767.
Where are solar ovens being used the most? There are reliable reports that there are over 500,000 cookers in use in both India and China. There are also tens of thousands of solar panael cookers in use by the Darfur refugees in Chad.
How hot do solar ovens get? Place an oven thermometer in the sunny part of the oven to get a reading similar to what the cooking pot is "feeling". The temperature reached by box cookers and panel cookers depends primarily on the number and size of the reflectors used. A single-reflector box cooker usually tops out at around 150° C (300° F) as the food approaches being done. High temperatures, however, are not needed for cooking. Your oven will cook just fine as long as it gets up to about 90° C (200° F) or so. Higher temperatures cook larger quantities, cook faster, and allow for cooking on marginal days; However, many people prefer to cook at lower temperatures, since then they can leave the food to cook while they go about their business. With a single-reflector box cooker, once the food is cooked, it just stays warm and doesn't scorch. It's good to keep in mind that food containing moisture cannot go much above 100° C (212° F), unless a pressurized cooking vessel is used. The high temperatures you see in cookbooks for conventional ovens are just for convenience and for special effects such as quick browning.
If I build a box cooker out of cardboard, won't it catch fire? No. Paper burns at 451° F (233° C) and your cooker won't get that hot.
Slide Show:
