The Martians

Arrin D. & Jaxon M., Grade 6, Cape View Elementary

We decided to build a solar oven. In Florida it is sunny a lot so we thought it would be cool to try it. We like engineering and we like to cook. We used a cardboard box, tinfoil, electrical tape, insulation pipe and a plexiglass top. We had to do some modifications to our first design because although it did get pretty hot, there was some heat escaping and we didnt like that. We cooked our endhiladas in the first model. So, we then added the insulation pipe, more mirrors, and some more tape to hold in the air. Our handle on the door is a plastic detergent cap. We included a video of our log book that has lots of information about how we did this project.

First try: Enchiladas

10:30am 80degrees to start, weather outside was 57 degrees and sunny Ending temperature was 100 degrees. Put the food in and cooked it until 2:00pm. It was warm enough to eat by then. We only used vegetables and no meat because we werent sure if we would have enough time and heat to cook the meat all the way and we didnt want to get sick – so we stuck to black bean enchiladas. There were extras so we took them home to eat for dinner.

Next time, we wanted to get the inside temperature even higher. We started at 9:30am with a temperature of 80 degrees. By 10:15 our hottest temperature was 130 degrees which was 30 degrees higher than our first try. If we had more time, we would have made even more modifications to try and make it hotter. Maybe next time.