Featured Activity: Solar cook a hot dog!

The sun’s rays are hot enough to burn our skin. But we can also be used for energy and heat. Here’s how to cook a hot dog by making your own solar cooker!

What you need:

• A bright, sunny day
• A cylindrical oatmeal container
• Sharp knife
• Fork
• Aluminum foil
• Hot dog or veggie dog
• Marshmallow (optional)
• Skewer or straw (optional)
• Napkin (optional)

What to do:

• Ask an adult to cut the oatmeal container in half length-wise. Line half of the box with aluminum foil (with the shiny side up).
• Take your solar oven outside and put it in bright sunlight. The aluminum foil will reflect sunlight from one side of the solar cooker to the other. The cooker will get very hot.
• Put a hot dog in your solar oven, and watch it cook (you may want to play a short game while you’re waiting). When it’s ready, use a fork or napkin to remove it.
• Enjoy your snack!

As an alternative, you can also roast a marshmallow on your solar cooker. Pierce a skewer or straw through the marshmallow, cut a slit in each end of the oatmeal container, place the ends of the skewer or straw in the slits so the marshmallow is hanging over the bottom of the cooker, and watch your marshmallow roast!

Brain Buster

The sun gives off  a LOT of energy: 386 billion megawatts! This energy is produced by nuclear reactions in the sun’s core, where extreme pressure and heat fuse hydrogen atoms into helium. How much energy is that? Just one of those megawatts could power 1,000 American homes – a small town! Using solar panels to power houses or solar-cooking hot dogs harnesses a very small amount of the sun’s energy. What are some other ways people could use energy from the sun to our benefit?

Source of Featured Activity: Publications International, Ltd., the Editors of. “Sun Activities for Kids.”  24 October 2007.  HowStuffWorks.com. <http://home.howstuffworks.com/sun-activities.htm> 25 June 2009.

Top image courtesy of National Weather Service, Eastern Region Headquarters; bottom image courtesy of NIH.gov.