Back when I was in elementary school, my textbook had a picture of a solar grill that would be so eco friendly that everyone would be cooking on them someday. It was basically a 2-3 ft paraboloid piece of aluminum to focus solar rays on a little tray where you would put your meat (or tofu?) to be cooked. Does anyone know where I could find something like that nowadays? because contrary to the predicitons, they seem not to be availible. Not a solar oven (I found a few of those), but a 2-3 foot paraboloid piece of burnished aluminum...
There's a parabolic mirror on ebay right now that might do nicely, but the guy wants $250 for it and I'm hoping for something a little cheaper.
I want to try some home experiments with the article linked by Dag about solar powered stirling engines.
Thanks for any and all help.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Try using google, this was one of many choices.... I am sure there are more options there.
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
well crap... I feel stoopid.
I swear I used google, but I gave up on the "solar grill" terminology before I got there...
thanks Kwea!
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
well, some of them are STILL about solar ovens, but that is all I did, just used solar gril...I had to go through a few sites though...
I am sure you could find a company that makes that sort of thing as well, but that site said it was about $215 for teh whole thing...cheaper than the mirror alone on ebay, right? Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Oh, man, I didn't even think about fresnel lenses... conventional lenses would probably be prohibitively expensive, but this should do nicely.
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
YES! $60! now we're cooking with... um... light?
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Best solution I found....satilite dishes are parabolic by nature...find a cheap one and cover it with reflective materials. Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
Well, they melted a penny with it... guess I'm going to have to re-think the idea of using copper pot bottoms as the bases for my Stirling engine Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
The aluminum foil covered satellite dish was high on my list of options, yes...
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
We used one to cook hot dogs in high school math after calculating the equation of the parabola. The same math teacher also had us calculate the volume of a watermelon using integration.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
My parents-in-law recently cooked dinner and dessert with their solar oven. Turned out pretty good, although they said the temperature only reached about 300°F.
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