Exploring Climate Action at Home: Make Your Own "Solar Oven"

Join in on the fun of our energy-themed Climate Action Day at home with a solar-powered science project—and enjoy a tasty snack when you’re done! Learn to make your own "solar oven" with a video from SciSchow Kids, and then use it to make yourself some s’mores (or another favorite snack) with the power of the sun.

Materials

• Recycled pizza box
• Tin foil
• Scissors
• Tape
• Plastic Wrap
• Black plate or construction paper
• Pencil
• A snack to cook inside the oven, like s'mores!

Instructions

1. Cover the inside of a recycled pizza box with tin foil to create a surface that reflects heat.
2. In order to allow sunlight into the pizza box, create a “window” by cutting a flap into the lid of the box. To make the flap, cut along three sides of the lid about an inch away from the edge.
3. Fold the flap back, and cover the inside portion of the flap with tin foil to help reflect even more sunlight into the box.
4. Open the lid of the box and tape plastic wrap over the hole you’ve cut into the box. This will seal up the “window” and trap heat inside the pizza box, so it gets hot enough to cook your food.
5. Put the food you want to cook on a black plate or black construction paper, which will absorb extra heat. For s’mores, you’ll need marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate! Then, place the plate with your snack inside the box and close the lid. If you have a thermometer, you can also place it inside with your food to watch how hot it gets inside the solar oven while your food is cooking.
6. Prop up the flap with a pencil so that sunlight can get through the window you’ve created.
7. Bring your oven outside, and watch as the sun cooks your food!

While you're waiting for your snack to be ready, check out the book “Iqbal and His Ingenious Idea,” which is available to read on Sora, the Citywide Digital Library for NYC Public School students. The book tells the story of Iqbal, who comes up with the idea to create a smokeless solar oven just like this one to help reduce pollution in his city during monsoon season, when meals would otherwise have to be cooked indoors over an open fire.  

For more energy-themed activities and projects that you can do to celebrate Climate Action Day with us, check out our Sustainability Resource Bank.