Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Solar S'more Oven

Today was "fun science" day! I saw directions on how to make a solar s'more oven
at the Family Fun website. We have been waiting for a nice sunny day, and today was it!
We gathered our materials- mainly a pizza box, aluminum foil, clear page protectors, and black construction paper.
Using the lid of the pizza box, you cut a flap, leaving about an inch around the lid's border (so it can still close )
Cover the top flap with aluminum foil-the shiny side out. Put aluminum foil on the inside of the bottom part of the box. On top of that glue down black construction paper.
I used clear packing tape to secure the plastic to the lid. You want it sealed as good as you can get it. This causes a greenhouse effect, trapping the heat inside the box.
Take the solar oven outside and set up your s'mores as shown above. Close the plastic covered lid and angle the foil flap to reflect extra sunlight into the box.
We read that the temperature can reach 275 degrees inside the box. I didn't have a thermometer this time, but we will certainly do this again and take a temp.
There was a lot of science to talk about while we did this project:
solar energy
reflection
black paper aborbing more heat than white
greenhouse effect

After about 30 minutes, the breeze blew the lid off our solar cooker. The chocolate looked somewhat melted, but we couldn't really tell about the marshmellows. I told the kids, "We'll try another time when the wind isn't blowing. Let's just eat these."

The chocolate was liquid--the marshmellows melting to the black construction paper--our solar cooker was a complete success--and our s'mores where overdone.

Notice Becky's hand catching Gracie's chocolate-she slipped her hand under as it dripped and then yelled,"It's burning me!!!!!!!!!"


Yes, solor energy is certainly a viable energy resourse, especially when cooking s'mores.

YUM!

YUM!!

10 comments:

Rhonda said...

What an awesome experiment! Yep, you can learn a lot from that one. I love s'mores. They are one of my favorites next to brownies. MMM! Your kiddos sure seem to be enjoying them. I love those happy faces. *smile*

Charlotte (WaltzingM) said...

Oh that looks like fun! I am sure it is hot enough here to try it. Does that mean I can tell my husband we have to order pizza tonight? It's a science project!!!

Ruth said...

Wow! This is awesome, Joann!

Jessica Gordon said...

This is such a fun idea!!! We will have to try this sometime.

Ladybug Mommy Maria said...

Joann,

This is great!

We're going camping next weekend and this would be a GREAT science thing to do!

Ladybug Mommy Maria said...

We actually didn't get to do this while we were camping - so we're doing it now - I'll post some pics to my blog later.

Thanks again for this idea!

Ladybug Mommy Maria said...

Well, my camera batteries are dead so there will be no pics :-(!

But lotsa chocolate makes up for that! LOL!

Anonymous said...

Trying it now. Probably be doing a big bunch of these boxes tomorrow at our cub scout outing.

I'll report back. I'm taking temps, and timing it at an outdoor temperature of 90F

Anonymous said...

My thermometer only goes up to 160 degrees, and it only took about 30 minutes to get there. I think it would go better to cut the marshmallow in half, and cook the marshmallow for 15 minutes and then add the chocolate for 10 minutes after that, cause after 30 minutes my chocolate was 100% liquid.

Anonymous said...

yyyyyyyyyyyeah buddy jk it looks fun