Name:

Solar Oven Challenge

Stage 1: Research
1. What is a solar oven? (Research on the internet links on schoology)
solar oven is a device which uses the energy of direct sunlight to heat, cook or pasteurise
drink
2. With a diagram, explain how a solar oven works. (Find examples/explanations on the
internet links on schoology)
Most solar cookers work on the basic principle: Sunlight is converted to heat energy, that is
retained for cooking. ... A solar cooker needs an outdoor location that is sunny for several
hours and protected from strong wind, and where food will be safe.
Labeled diagram:

Name:

Stage 2: Design
1. In your team, design a solar oven that you can construct easily in two lessons.
2. Write a list of all the materials you will need (these need to be easily sourced).
Black spray paint

cup

Glad wrap
Tin foil
Card board box
Sticky tape
Wooden sticks
3. With a labeled diagram (showing the materials used), explain why you chose these
materials (i.e. What is it about these materials that will make your solar oven as
effective as it can be?)
We chose these materials because they are light weight, they are attracted to the sun
and they were easy to find. These materials also retain the heat the glad wrap keeps the
heat in, the foil reflects the heat and the black spray paint attracts the heat.

Labeled diagram:

Name:

Stage 3: Construction
In your team, spend no more than two lessons constructing your solar oven prototype.
Stage 4: Testing the Prototype
1. Write an experimental procedure that describes how you will test the effectiveness of your
solar oven.
Things to consider:
- Will you leave the thermometer inside the oven or only put it in when we take the
temperature?
- How often will you take readings?
- What it the total length of time you will take readings for?
We will leave our thermometer in our solar oven and check the temperature every minute.

2. Create a table that you will use to record your observations/results.

Time (min)
0
3
6
10
12
14
15

Temperature (C)
15
21
32
39
42
48
51.1

3. Conduct your test and record your results in the table above.

Name:

Stage 5: Re-Designing the Prototype

1. In your team, choose one element of your solar oven to change in order to improve its
effectiveness.
2. Explain why you chose to change this particular element and what impact you think this will
have on the effectiveness of your solar oven.
We chose to put glad wrap around the solar oven so we could reduce the amount of wind
that would get to the chocolate and keep the heat from convecting.

3. Draw a diagram of your re-designed solar oven. Use labels to help explain the changes you
made.

4. Identify the independent variable (the variable you are changing in order to see what effect
it has on the dependent variable):

Name:

We changed the location of the solar oven.

5. Identify the dependent variable (the variable that responds to changes in the independent
variable):
The temperature changes inside the oven.
6. Identify any other variables that need to be controlled (kept the same) in order to make it a
fair test:
We also placed the solar oven behind a bin in order to stop the wind from knocking the
solar oven over and also from cooling it down.

7. Write a hypothesis for your investigation. (i.e. What prediction can you make about the
impact of your change on the effectiveness of the solar oven?)
State your hypothesis as a relationship between the independent and dependent variables.
I hypothesis that the oven will work effectively if there is not much wind to cool it down.

8. Explain why you made this hypothesis/prediction.

I made this hypothesis because when we tested it it got very hot on a very cold day.

Name:

Stage 6: Construction and Re-testing

1. Make the necessary changes to your solar oven.
The things we changed to make it more effective were, we put strong sticks on the side to
hold our solar panels up and put glad wrap around the sides to stop convection.
2. Re-test your solar oven, using the same procedure that you used in the first test.
Firsts test: 51
Second test: 64
Last test: 87
3. Copy your results table into the space below. Add another column/row to enter your results
from the re-test.
Time (min)
Temperature (C)
0
20
3
40
6
57
10
78
12
82
14
85
15
87

4. Using graph paper provided to you by the teacher, construct a graph that best represents
your data from the table above.

Name:

Temp v time
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

10

12

14

16

Stage 7: Data

Analysis and Evaluation

1. Analyse your data. Are there any patterns or trends in your data? What is the relationship
between the variables you have investigated? Is the hypothesis supported by the data?
The temperature changes quickly for ten minutes then it plateaued at 80 degrees Celsius.
This data supports our hypothesis by the big spike of temperature.

2. Using science concepts (e.g. thermal equilibrium, convection, conduction, insulators,

conductors), explain the patterns, trends or relationships you have found in your data.
The temperature inside the oven steadily increased because of sun being radiated from the
sun. The design minimized heat loss by convection and conduction. The glad wrap reduced
heat loss via convection. Our design did not minimize heat loss via conduction as we did
not use any insulation. This was an obvious design fault.

Name:

3. What were the main sources of experimental error (e.g. measurement error, poor control of
variables)?
Experimental error was small and not significant as shown by our temperature recordings .
4. How confident are you with your conclusions? How much error/uncertainty is associated
with your data?
We think our conclusions are valid because we took such good temperature recordings.

5. How could the design of the experiment have been improved to reduce error?
We need to use more insulation to reduces heat loss via conduction. Also the size of our
oven could have been smaller.

6. Do the results support your hypothesis? Explain.

Our results do support our hypothesis by the spike of temperature in our oven and the heat
our oven got to.