Solar Competition

I randomly saw an ad for a solar competition and decided to look into it.  An FPL solar facility was hosting the competition for their grand opening.  It seemed like an excellent learning opportunity.  So, why not?

Nicole invited a new friend, Cecilia, to participate with her. They decided to compete in the solar cooking competition which judges you on your solar cooker and your food.   Together, they spent one day a week for about a month building solar cookers and testing them out.  Both also worked diligently at home to fine tune their cookers.

Cecilia's family had much better success than we did.  With the help of her mom and dad, they were able to build a beautiful solar cooker that got up to 300 degrees!  We couldn't get ours over 150 degrees :(

It was time of dedication, despite our constant failures.  Nicole (and I) built  8 or so different ovens...none of them worked.  Until...until we tried a funnel design using a windshield cover from walmart.  Unbelievably, it worked!  We got our quinoa to cook in just about 2 hours.  Quinoa never tasted so good!

The girls met at the competition near Bradenton, FL at 8:30am and started their prep work.  The competeted against 20-something other teams in the area.

They cut their veggies, cracked their eggs, and set it all up.

Then, they sat and waited.  While waiting, they were interviewed by judges on the design of one of their cookers.  They checked out the other competitions taking place and the nearby solar fields.

With their veggie frittata done cooking, the moved it into the warmer (otherwise known as Nicole cooker that won't get very hot!), and started making the lemon cupcakes. They quickly put them together and placed them in the heated solar cooker.

About an hour later, 6 beautiful cupcakes were ready to be topped.  The girls began to hustle to plate their food for the taste test.

They prepared three plates for the three judges.  One was a local chef, one was a local news anchor, and the other....well, I can't remember what she did :)

The girls stood in front of the judges, explained their food, and answered their questions.  The judges were quite impressed and said, "This is the best thing we have tasted all day". This was after the high school and middle school teams went!  The girls were so incredibly excited!

We had to wait about an hour for the announcement of the winners.

The girls won 3rd place in the solar cooking design.

And FIRST place in their food taste!  Woohoo!!!

They won a total of $400 to split to be used for STEM classes or supplies for school...and they were invited to participate in the state wide solar competition in May!

This was not an easy project, in fact, it was much more difficult than I anticipated.  We had to persevere through failures, and revamp our ideas over and over again.  It was hard.

But it paid off!  What a great experience.

Oh yeah....AND, the girls had a little article written about them in a local parenting magazine.  That is super fun too!