13 January 2013 - Science Fair Project Time!

It is time once again for the elementary school science fair.  This year is Emily's second go-around (they do it for 4th and 5th grade).  Last year, you may recall, Emily tested the gassy-ness of various types of soda pop. This year, she decided she wanted to make a solar oven and attempt to bake cookies in it.  This might seem like a fine idea, but baking cookies in the snowy dead of winter in a place where the sun rarely shines seemed sketchy at best to me.

Here is the solar oven; a mason jar painted black to attract and trap the heat.

Her first attempt was with chocolate crackle cookie dough.

The oven is a parabola made of cardboard and coated with aluminum foil to reflect the sunlight and its heat.

At 32-34 degrees and about 4 1/2 hours of baking time, the crackle cookie was about half done when the sun went down.  I was impressed considering the circumstances.  A few days later when the sun came out again, the girls tried again and though the temperature had dropped to 21-30 degrees, the second cookie baked quite thoroughly and Joanne even had to use a hot pad to hold the oven because it had gotten so hot. Solar science project --- success!

Finally, after waiting more than three weeks, we also got to hunt dangerous and delicious animals this week.  Emily is a regular killing machine on this game!  (Jessica, pictured, is not half bad herself.)