How To Make A Solar Oven at Home
Wondering how you might better use or recycle all those unused shoeboxes lying in one corner of your home? Well, here is an interesting way. Harness the power of the sun to heat yummy treats with the help of those shoeboxes!
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Confused?
Here’s another hint. Have you ever heard of the expression, “it’s so hot today that you could almost fry an egg on the pavement?” What if it was true? Find out with this simple, fun and easy-to-build DIY activity.
DIY Solar Oven
You must have heard about a microwave oven. A microwave oven is a machine that cooks food with the help of microwaves, a type of radio wave.
Read the interesting story of a scientist who accidentally discovered how radio waves could melt his chocolate bar!
A solar oven also acts somewhat similarly to an electric microwave, except it uses sunlight instead of electricity. Also called a solar cooker, it harnesses sunlight as its source of heat. It is a simple, portable and effective box that you can easily make at home. And yes! You can fix a meal using your solar cooker.
Excited? Let’s make a DIY Solar Oven using a cardboard box!
To make a solar oven at home, you will need:
✔ A cardboard box with an attached lid. Lid should have flaps so that the box can be closed tightly. (You can take a shoebox or a pizza box or any other unused cardboard box with a lid)
✔ Aluminum foil
✔ Clear plastic wrap
✔ Black chart papers
✔ A pair of scissors or a paper cutter
✔ Glue
✔ Tape
✔ Ruler or a wooden stick
✔ Thermometer
Steps to make the solar oven:
- Take a cardboard box and flip to the top side.
- Mark a border of two centimetres on the three sides, leaving the joining side of the box intact.
- Using a paper cutter, cut across the dotted lines. With this, your oven base with an open flap is ready.
- Open the flap and cover its bottom part with glue. Then, taking an aluminum sheet, paste it on the glued side of the flap neatly (Make sure there are no folds on the aluminum foil)
- Similarly, line the inside of the box with aluminum foil on all sides. Glue it down and make the foil as smooth as possible.
- Place black chart paper on top of the aluminum foil and glue it. This way you will have the black paper as the base, on top of which you can place your food items.
- Take a clear plastic sheet and wrap it across the top of the box, leaving the aluminum flap.
- Tape down both sides and make sure it’s secure.
- Use a ruler or a wooden stick to hold the lid of the oven open.
How to make a DIY Solar Oven at home – step by step
Now that your DIY solar oven is ready, let’s put it to work
Pre- Heat
Set your DIY solar oven in the direct sun on a sunny day when the outdoor temperature is close to 25 degrees. Keep the flap open with the help of the ruler or the wooden stick to reflect the sunlight into the box.
What’s the science behind it?
When thermal light energy from the sun enters your oven, the foil in the box reflects the light, concentrating the heat into your oven. Once the light has gone through the plastic wrap, it heats the air that is trapped inside. The black paper absorbs the heat at the bottom of the oven, making sure that the heat stays where it is, instead of escaping out the sides of the oven.
Read more: What are the uses of Solar Energy
Although cooking food in a solar oven takes longer, and requires both your patience and time, it is very easy to use, and safe to leave alone while the energy from the sun cooks your food.
If you don’t want to wait that long and eat your solar-cooked food, you can also try heating something that has already been cooked. For example, a slice of pizza or a bowl of soup?
Will you try out this DIY? What will you cook in your brand new DIY solar oven? Do share it with us in the comments below.
Happy cooking!