Solar Cooker: Budget Edition
I have a penchant for pointless little things like this.

A couple of years ago, I was living in a flat which was basically a loft conversion at the top of a house. The only upside to this claustrophobic, 4-bedroom dump was that we had access to the roof via a skylight and a ladder.

Now when the sun shone on this (flat) roof, it got very hot - far too hot to stand on barefoot. This gave me a daft idea.

I'd heard about third-world countries being given "solar cookers" - basically a big round mirror, into the centre of which you put your food and point the whole thing at the sun. The sun's rays are thus focussed on the food and this heats it up.

Now I obviously didn't have access to such a mirror, so I took the opposite approach - if I want to focus this solar energy, why not use a lens?

Well, I didn't have a lens, either. What I did have was some tin foil, a pint glass and a sausage.

Result: after 30 minutes of sitting on this piece of tin foil and under an upturned pint glass, the sausage hadn't cooked at all. It had begun to sweat a bit, but that was the limit of my solar-powered culinary achievement.

I abandoned this experiment and put the grill on instead. Oh, well.
(LongJohnBaldry, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 13:08, 4 replies)

Brilliant!
Have you contacted the Royal Society?
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Thu 24 Jul 2008, 13:43, closed)

Many times.
The last time I called, they warned me that the police had traced my number and would be out looking for me if I breathed heavily down the 'phone at their secretary again.
(LongJohnBaldry, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 13:59, closed)

I think we should start our own Royal Society
Can you imagine if the combined minds of B3ta tried to solve the world's problems?

I can guarantee the solutions would include kittens, alcohol, and goatse.

Oh, and *click*
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 16:34, closed)

Superb
*click*
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Thu 24 Jul 2008, 18:01, closed)