WA students discover solar cooking:

Above - Wembley Primary School Year Six student Narani Santhirakumaran made chocolate chip muffins at the 2005 Solar Cook-Off, which was held at World of Energy in Fremantle. Narani won a special prize for her solar cooker’s innovative design.
Source: Western Power’s World of Energy.

Western Power’s World of Energy has sponsored a students’ solar-cooking competition since 1998. Each year, primary school students (from Years Five to Seven) build and design their own solar-powered cookers. They make a variety of recipes under the sun during the Western Power Solar Cooking Competition. The competition is held at the state’s energy and environmental educational facility, World of Energy, in Fremantle. World of Energy encourages students to research and build solar cookers because they do not use electricity or gas, they do not require fire wood and do not produce air pollution.

Above - One “solar cooker” design.
Source: Western Power’s World of Energy.

The simplest type of solar cooker is a box cooker: an insulated box painted black on the inside and covered with glass or plastic. Sunlight enters the box and heats the food inside. Reflectors can be added to increase the solar insulation captured. An inexpensive cooker can be made out of cardboard, crumpled-up newspaper for insulation, and aluminum foil for reflectors, and can reach temperatures over 120°C . Higher-quality cookers can reach temperatures of up to 220°C.

Above - in Africa where wood fuel is scarce but there is plenty of heat from the sun - the simple solar cooker becomes very usefull, cheap and reliable - as long as the usn is out.

In many developing countries of the world, burning wood for cooking is contributing to deforestation, desertification, air pollution, and global warming. Solar cookers are assisting in reducing these environmental problems and they can also be used to purify drinking water, sanitize medical instruments, and heat water for laundry. The first solar cooker is believed to have been invented by a Swiss naturalist, Horace de Saussure, in 1767. Solar cooking projects are now operating in most of the countries of the world.

For more information, go to the Solar Cooking Archive at:
www.solarcooking.org/

Above - Mt Helena Primary School student Naomi Payne, 10, designed her solar cooker to sizzle a sausage at World of Energy's Solar Cook-Off in 2005.
Source: Western Power’s World of Energy.

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