Have you ever eaten s'mores? They're a fun summer tradition combining three tasty treats: graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate. Usually they're made by toasting a marshmallow over a campfire until it gets gooey, then sandwiching it between crackers and chocolate!
What if you could make s'mores without having to first build a campfire?
Have you ever baked bread or a cake? You need an oven to do that. Did you know you can make your own oven using just the power of the sun? No electricity needed! The sun is, after all, a sphere of burning gases that keeps our planet from freezing in the very cold galaxy!
LET'S GET STARTED!
WHAT'S GOING ON?
Sure, you could have just put your smores out in the sun and they'd melt eventually, but creating the 'oven' makes it go a lot faster! Why? Well, we added some elements to help make the most all the sun's heat.
For one, you put your smores into a closed container - cardboard all around, and plastic wrap on top. The plastic wrap let the heat from the sun enter the box, but trapped the warmed-up air inside - no breeze could blow it away.
Aluminum foil is a shiny, reflective material. Putting it on the underside of the door allowed it to bounce heat from the sun back toward the s'mores inside the 'oven'! This is also why emergency blankets (sometimes called 'space blankets') are often made with aluminum-covered material, to reflect the heat of your own body back to you to keep you warm.
Black objects absorb light and heat, while white objects, reflect light and heat. If two people are in the sunshine, one wearing a white shirt and one a black shirt, the person with the white shirt will stay cooler than the person with the black shirt! In this same way, putting the black paper on the bottom of the box helped to heat up the inside of the oven even more because of the heat it absorbed.
SHARE WITH US!
Let us know how your experiments turned out! Share your photos and results with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or send us an email to info@yellow-scope.com. We love getting your messages!
For more exciting experiments, check out our Yellow Scope science kits on the Shop tab of our website!
Chelsea Schuyler
Author