How to make a solar oven out of a shoebox

Do you want to know how to make a solar oven out of a shoebox? Making a solar oven out of the shoebox is quite easy. You will be able to make a solar oven with the daily household item. The main idea behind the construction of the solar oven is to cook without using any kind of fuel or energy. This solar oven will cook with the natural daylight. It will use sun rays for cooking the food. This kind of solar oven uses solar rays to produce heat so that it can cook the food with it. You won’t need any kind of fuel or coal to cook as you will be able to cook with natural sunlight.

How to Make a Solar Oven Out of a Shoebox

So here in this article, we will guide you through different steps of making an oven from a shoebox. Generally, the main mechanism of this solar oven is that this oven will somehow trap the sunlight into the shoebox, and it will increase the temperature inside of the show box gradually. The solar oven doesn’t let any kind of temperature get out of the box. The heat will trap inside the box and will create extreme heat to cook the food inside the oven.

A solar oven will trap the heat inside the box and will increase the inside temperature quickly. They are able to create such amount of heat that you will be able to boil an egg in there or cook some other thing in there. This is a really clever project, and you will enjoy making this fantastic solar oven very much. You can even teach your kids about their school project. The will immensely enjoy making this solar oven.

So here, we will describe the process in a step by step process so that you understand each step properly. So hopefully at the end of the article, you will know everything about how to make a solar oven out of a shoebox.

Things that You Will Need

•     A shoebox
•     Thermocol
•     Aluminum foil
•     Glass

Do you want to know how to make a solar oven out of a shoebox? Making a solar oven out of the shoebox is quite easy. You will be able to make a solar oven with the daily household item. The main idea behind the construction of the solar oven is to cook without using any kind of fuel or energy. This solar oven will cook with the natural daylight. It will use sun rays for cooking the food. This kind of solar oven uses solar rays to produce heat so that it can cook the food with it. You won't need any kind of fuel or coal to cook as you will be able to cook with natural sunlight.

Insulate the Box

This is the first and foremost step of making a solar oven out of a shoebox. So first, find a sturdy and well functional shoe box. Do not select any kind of faulty shoebox because that will ruin your solar oven. So make sure that you got a proper shoe box. Now the first thing you need to do is to insulate the inside of the box so that the heat cannot escape the box. General paper is not capable enough to do that. That’s why you will need to find some thermocol, which is a great aromatic hydrocarbon. This thermocouple is known as polystyrene, which is highly insulated. 

This will make sure that no heat can pass through the wall of your shoebox. So you will need to find four-piece of cork, and then you will have to wrap the thermocouple around it. Then apply some glue on the four sides of the wall and stick those cork with thermocol to the wall. You will also need another cork, which you will have to wrap with thermocol. Then put that cork at the bottom of the shoe box. Now you will see that all the five planes of the shoebox are covered with insulator except for the upper part. We will discuss that in the next segment.  

Adding Glass

As you can see that we have insulated all the four plan of the shoe box, now we have to insulate the upper plane of the shoebox. But there is an issue here. We will have to use such an insulator, which will let the sunlight enter into the shoebox, but it will not allow them to get out of the shoebox. Glass is a perfect material to do that. The science behind this phenomenon is that when the real sunlight enters the shoebox, the wavelength of the sunlight is really small, and that allows the sunlight to enters into the shoe box. But after it has been reflected by the insulator, the wavelength changes. That’s why the heat can not go through the Glass.

So you need a glass that has the same dimension as the shoe box. Then you will have to stick that glass cover onto that shoebox. You can do it in several ways. The most efficient way to do that is to use tape to stick one side of the Glass. Then you will be able to use the Glass as a lid. You will able to enter the food through this glass lid.

Reflector

Now you will have to add reflector so that maximum sunlight goes through the Glass. As you are trying to cook something there so it will need a lot of sunlight to generate that kind of heat. So what reflector does is that they will make sure that more sunlight enters into the shoe box via Glass. To make a reflector, you will have to do the same thing as the first step. You need three crock, and then you will have to wrap them with some aluminum foil. 

Aluminum foil is an ideal reflector, and it will make sure that the maximum number of sunlight is going through the reflector. So you have to put this crock wrapped with aluminum foil over the Glass and stick to one another. They will form a box-like shape, and one side will open. They will surround the shoebox from three sides, but one side will remain open. One of the side will remain open to make sure that enough sunlight is entering into the shoebox.

Conclusion

So the reflector will capture sunray, and then they will reflect them inside the shoebox. The insulator that is located inside the shoebox will trap that sunlight and generate a tremendous amount of heat. With that kind of heat, you will be able to cook almost any kind of thing. So hopefully, now you know how to make a solar oven out of a shoebox.