Solar Oven S'mores

My name is Noah and I am a sixth grade student in Massachusetts. My school assignment was to build and test a solar oven. A solar oven can be made of household materials and uses the power of the sun. A pro to a solar oven is that they are clean and no gas or electricity is needed. A con is that there are limited times of day you can cook in a solar oven and it is limited by weather. I acquired my ideas from other instructable's and the internet.

The materials needed for this project are: a pair of scissors, a pizza box, a ruler, a pencil, a roll of plastic wrap, newspaper, tape, black construction paper, a glue stick, a wooden skewer, a thermometer, and aluminum foil or reflective vinyl.

Take an empty pizza box and mark and cut 3 sides of a square to make a flap on the cover of the box. It should be slightly smaller than your plastic wrap

Add a piece of black construction paper to the bottom of the box.

Roll up newspaper and then roll them in black construction paper to use as insulators.

Glue them to the box leaving room to close the cover.

Cut a piece of reflective vinyl to fit the flap.

Stick the vinyl on the flap facing towards the inside of the box. This will reflect the sun into your oven.

Tape plastic wrap onto the opening of the cover of the box. You should make sure it is air tight. If it is not you will lose heat.

Use a wooden skewer to hold the top flap in the position to catch the sun. It can be attached with tape.

At 3:30 in the afternoon my solar oven could heat up to a maximum of 175 degrees Fahrenheit and could cook some really good s'mores. After the first ten minutes the oven has gotten up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. At 20 minutes it had reached 175 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point I added chocolate to the top rather than in the oven so it wouldn't melt too quickly. I let it stay for another 10 minutes and then took it all out. The marshmallow had puffed but did not brown. The chocolate had melted as shown in the picture. One benefit is that multiple s'mores can be cooked at the same time. It was not a traditional s'more, but it was very good!