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Designing a Pizza Box Solar Oven

Grade 6 engineering practice: compare six pizza box solar ovens against a temperature goal and a cost limit, then explain each part's energy transfer.

Grade 6ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-PS3-3

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
11 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use test data to judge which solar oven design meets a temperature goal and a cost limit.
Students explain how each part of a solar oven increases energy taken in or reduces energy lost.

How to use

Read the passage and the test table together, and have students name the one difference between each pair of designs before they answer.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-PS3-3

Design and test a device, such as an insulated box or a solar cooker, that reduces or increases thermal energy transfer.

Preview

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Name Date

Designing a Pizza Box Solar Oven

Test and improve a device that takes in energy from sunlight.

The oven tests

Read about the club's ovens, then use the tables to answer the questions.

Nachos From the Sun

For Earth Day, the engineering club at Harbor View Middle School planned to sell nachos warmed by sunlight alone. Club leader Lucía Ferraro set a goal: the air inside an oven has to reach at least 60 °C within 40 minutes, which is hot enough to melt the cheese. There was also a limit. Each oven had to be built from a donated pizza box and supplies that cost no more than $3.00 in all.

The club built six ovens from the same size of pizza box. In the lid of each box they cut a flap. In most ovens the flap was covered with aluminum foil and propped open at an angle. Some ovens had black paper on the floor of the box. Most had clear plastic wrap taped over the opening under the flap, and one had a glass pane from an old picture frame instead. In three ovens, the club stuffed rolled newspaper between the inner and outer walls of the box.

The club tested all six ovens at the same time, side by side on the sunny blacktop at noon, with every flap facing the Sun. A thermometer inside each oven read 25 °C at the start, the same as the outdoor air. After 40 minutes, the club read each thermometer. They repeated the test the next day at the same time and averaged the two days. Lucía also read the thermometer in Design D every 10 minutes on the first day.

To check the cost limit, the club's treasurer, Dominic Okafor, listed the price of each supply: $0.50 for a sheet of foil, $0.50 for a sheet of black paper, $0.50 for the plastic wrap and $3.00 for the glass pane. The pizza boxes and the newspaper were free.