Lerato Cooks Up a Plan
EiE unit, Now You're Cooking: Designing Solar Ovens
Lerato, a young girl from Botswana, has been newly charged with caring for her younger brothers and sister. As she struggles to handle these new responsibilities, she becomes more and more convinced that she will never get to attend University.
When Tsoane, a friend of Lerato’s older sister, returns from University, Lerato learns about the field of green engineering. Tsoane gives Lerato a solar oven—a simple green technology that captures heat and light energy from the Sun to cook food.
Lerato involves her brothers and sisters as they work to design an insulation system for the solar oven. Using what they know and learn about thermal insulators and conductors, Lerato and her siblings are able to successfully design a solar oven that meets their cooking needs. When Lerato’s older sister and grandmother hear about this successful engineering endeavor, they convince Lerato that University is not such an unattainable dream after all.
After reading how Lerato uses the Engineering Design Process to build a solar oven, students are challenged to design a solar oven of their own. With some creativity and knowledge of the engineering design process, everyone can engineer!
The Now You're Cooking: Designing Solar Ovens unit has been specifically designed to accompany a science unit on energy.
