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Murfreesboro CBI class cooks with solar oven at Crater of Diamonds By Waymon Cox Sophomore Kimberly Ellis and CBI teacher Diana Stolarz aim their solar oven at the sun. Greetings from the Crater of Diamonds! On Tuesday, May 4, students from the Community Based Instruction class at Murfreesboro High School visited Crater of Diamonds State Park to demonstrate a working solar oven for park visitors and staff. The oven was their entry for the park’s Salvage Challenge, a recycling contest for which participants created functional objects by reusing discarded items. Tasha Pennington, a senior, Zack Kosters, a junior, and Kimberly Ellis, a sophomore, built the oven out of several parts, including boxes, cardboard, aluminum foil, and a picture frame. Depending on the time of day, the students also stacked old text books to tilt the oven toward the sun. The students explained that the oven was built using two large boxes, one inside of the other, with packing peanuts and grocery bags used to insulate the space between. The smaller box was painted black on the inside to absorb sunlight and help heat the oven. A glass picture frame was placed on top of the oven, with a “sunlight collector” made from four pieces of cardboard-covered foil attached to the outside of the frame. The collector funneled sunlight down and through the glass, where it was absorbed and transformed into heat. This lid was secured and sealed to the oven using one of man’s best inventions - duct tape.
The class used the oven to bake hot dogs for lunch. Temperatures as high as 250 degrees were recorded inside the oven on sunny spring days.
Before coming to the park, the students tested their creation at school with several recipes, including meatballs and broccoli casserole. Using an oven thermometer, they recorded temperatures as high as 250 degrees inside the oven on sunny spring days. They demonstrated the oven’s unique use of sunlight at the park by baking chocolate chip cookies and hot dogs. The oven cooked each food in about an hour, which is slower than a conventional oven, but yields numerous benefits such as no energy usage, even cooking of the food, and bringing people outdoors more often!
CBI class teacher Diana Stolarz shows a chocolate chip cookie baked with a solar oven.
To honor the students’ success, the park presented an engraved plaque for the school, and Pennington, Kosters, and Ellis each received tickets for a summer lake tour at DeGray Lake Resort State Park. The solar oven serves as an impressive example of how we can reuse things that might otherwise be thrown out and a simple way we can be more ecologically-friendly!
Search area last plowed: April 23, 2010 Most recent rain: Light rain on Sunday, May 09, 2010 Diamond finds for May 3 - 9, 2010 (100 pt. = 1 ct.) Total diamonds registered since January 1, 2010: 222 May 3 - Corina Lewis, Eaton, AR, 8 pt. white May 4 - No diamonds registered May 5 - Miguel Galaviz, Lake Odessa, MI, 16 pt. white; Tim Pitman, Lonoke, AR, 15 pt. brown, 52 pt. white, 1.02 ct. brown; Beth Gilbertson, Salida, CO, 12 pt. yellow, 19 pt. white May 6 - Anthony Bruss, Sterling Heights, MI, 3 pt. brown, 5 pt. yellow, 6 pt. brown May 7 - Charles Chadwick and Samantha Simet, Omaha, NE, 15 pt. white; Rickey and Becky Keeton, Delight, AR, 3 pt. white, 17 pt. white May 8 - Beth Gilbertson, Salida, CO, 5 pt. brown, 17 pt. white; Ladon Titus, Perryville, AR, 97 pt. yellow. Rickey and Becky Keeton, Delight, AR, 5 pt. white, 23 pt. white |
209 State Park Road
Murfreesboro, AR 71958
Email: craterofdiamonds@arkansas.com
Phone: (870) 285-3113
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