How to Make a Solar Cooker?
Are your children familiar with the concept of solar energy? Have they ever seen a solar cooker before? If not, this is the best time to enhance their knowledge about solar energy by teaching them how to make a solar cooker at home. Conducting science experiments for kids enables them to expand their understanding of solar energy and its applications in our day-to-day lives. Kids must learn about solar cookers before performing the experiment. A solar cooker is a device that cooks food items with the help of energy from direct sunlight. It collects heat from sunlight and traps it inside the solar cooker allowing the food items to cook.
Contents
- Easy Science Projects: How to Make a Solar Cooker?
- Benefits of Learning How to Make a Solar Cooker?
- Frequently Asked Questions on How to Make a Solar Cooker?
How to make a solar cooker at home? This might sound like a big task, but it is a DIY science project if you do it systematically. You need nothing but materials easily available at home. Kids might find it challenging to understand how a solar cooker works. In this regard, you can practically show them how it works. The basic principle behind a solar cooker is that direct sunlight warms the cooker to cook the food kept inside it. In this process, the light energy is converted into heat energy.
Easy Science Projects: How to Make a Solar Cooker?
Solar cookers are extremely beneficial in providing sustainable energy and contribute to climate change. It is an eco-friendly product used for making delicious food. There is no usage of burning fossil fuels, wood, electricity or any gas to produce energy as it takes energy directly from the Sun and converts it to heat energy to cook or warm food items. To teach kids how to make a solar cooker, you need to provide them with easy and understandable instructions.
Aim of the Project
The project aims to make a solar cooker for children using the materials available at home and observe how it works under the guidance of elders.
Materials Required
- A large carton box
- Aluminum foils
- A toughened glass cover
- Black paint
- A cup of rice
Procedure
- Take a carton box and paint it with black color paint inside the box. Make sure the lid of the box is opened and place it diagonally facing the Sun.
- Keep a cup of rice or other food items inside the blackened carton box.
- Take a toughened glass and cover the box in such a way that no air passes through it under the guidance of elders.
- Take an aluminum foil and paste it on the carton’s lid facing the sunlight.
- Finally, keep the box in the open area facing toward the Sun.
Result
In this experiment, kids can observe that direct sunlight gets trapped inside the blackened box allowing the food to cook. It absorbs the heat trapped inside the box as the glass cover does not allow it to escape and retains an adequate amount of heat inside the box for the food to cook.
Also, explore how does an electroscope work?
Benefits of Learning How to Make a Solar Cooker
The benefits of learning how to make a solar cooker for kids are mentioned below.
- It enables children to perform experiments on how to make a solar cooker systematically.
- It teaches kids about the structure, function and application of solar cookers through experiments.
- It develops critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and analytical skills in children.
- It increases observational and creative thinking skills in children.
- It helps children to understand scientific concepts by performing experiments practically.
To know more information, explore science games for kids, STEM activities for kids in the kids learning section at Osmo.
Frequently Asked Questions on How to Make a Solar Cooker
How to make a solar cooker?
You can make a solar cooker using materials available at home, such as a carton box, toughened glass, aluminium foil, black paint, a cup of rice, etc. Kids can follow the procedure for making a solar cooker mentioned in this article.
What are the benefits of learning how to make a solar cooker?
The benefits of learning how to make a solar cooker are that it helps children learn about solar cookers, their functions and applications by performing an experiment. Besides this, it helps children develop critical thinking and observation skills for better learning outcomes.