Simple and Easy Solar Oven

This is a Instructable on a very simple Cardboard Solar Cooker. It’s very easily made and the materials can be found almost everywhere. There is much room for improvement so if you guys can make it better in any way feel free to contact me.

Our solar cooker design uses aluminum foil to reflect and absorb the sun’s light to create heat in a focused or unfocused area which can either be used to purify stagnant water or cook easily prepared food. We have three panels attached to the cardboard reflecting the sun’s rays into the inside of it, and the inside of the box covered with the back side of aluminum foil to absorb the heat better. The plastic wrapped cardboard is to trap some of the heat inside of the box to increase the temoerature.

• Cardboard box (Any Size) we got ours from our school for free
• Aluminum foil, can be found in any super market
• Tape
• Plastic wrap
• Extra cardboard

To make sure your solar cooker gets the maximum amount of heat, angle the flabs to where it will be able to reflect the sunlight into the the center of the box. To get the angle that we felt was best, we cut more into the box to fold it in more.

Once you’ve found the position to where it’d reflect the best amount of sunlight, measure out the size of the flabs to be able to cut the right amount of aluminum foil for it, then simply cut a piece of tape put one end over the other so the outsides of the tape is the glue side place it on the flabs and put the piece of aluminum over it and flatten it out so the tape is flat and no air is in between.

Fill in the inside of the box with aluminum sheets with the more reflective side facing inside the box and the less reflective side facing outwards so the sunlight hits that side of the aluminum sheet, tape them all together.

To make the cover for the inside, simply get pieces of cardboard into the shape of a square but make sure it fits over the square hole, then plastic wrap it. To make it more sturdy, get more cardboard and staple it over the sides to enclose it. Then get pieces of tape and tape it on to make sure it stays on and seals right.