A solar oven or solar cooker is a device which uses sunlight as its energy source. Because they use no fuel and they cost nothing to run, solar ovens have numerous advantages over cooking with a conventional oven
There are many different types of Solar cookers. All solar cookers are based on a small pool of ideas to heat food with the sun's heat and light. The basic principles of solar ovens are:
Concentrating sunlight: Some device, usually a mirror, is used to concentrate light and heat from the sun into a small cooking area, making the energy more concentrated and therefore more potent.
Converting light to heat: Any black on the inside of a solar cooker, as well as certain materials for pots, will improve the effectiveness of turning light into heat. A black pan will absorb almost all of the sun's light and turn it into heat, substantially improving the effectiveness of the cooker. Also, the better a pan conducts heat, the faster the oven will work.
Trapping heat: Isolating the air inside the cooker from the air outside the cooker makes an important difference. Using a clear solid, like a plastic bag or a glass cover, will allow light to enter, but once the light is absorbed and converted to heat, a plastic bag or glass cover will trap the light inside using the Greenhouse Effect. This makes it possible to reach similar temperatures on cold and windy days as on hot days.
