Now You're Cooking: Designing Solar Ovens Book In Stock Now

This unit guides students to explore energy, and how heat energy from the Sun can be harnessed by a solar cooker to heat food. Many students might take technologies such as stoves, ovens, and toasters for granted, but these conveniences aren't available to Lerato, a girl who lives in Botswana. Through the storybook Lerato Cook Up a Plan, students will be introduced to Lerato and her family. Lerato and her siblings have to gather firewood in order to build a cooking fire to heat their food. When Tsoane, another villager, returns from University, Lerato learns about the field of green engineering. Green engineers are concerned with designing technologies that have as little impact on the environment as possible. Tsoane shows Lerato how she could use a well insulated solar cooker to help cook food, eliminating the chore of gathering firewood and the environmental impacts of creating cooking fires. Key concepts introduced in the storybook include life cycle assessments of engineered products, thermal insulators, and thermal conductors. In the classroom, students are given the challenge of creating a well-insulated solar oven. Students will test an array of materials to find the best thermal insulators, and will also consider the environmental impacts of each material. Once students have tested and analyzed each material, they will design and test their own solar cookers.