The BYU Solar Cooker/Cooler | Page 3

either).
I thought that a pressure cooker would be great. But the prices in stores
were way too high for me. Wait, how about a canning jar? These little
beauties are designed to relieve pressure through the lid--a nice
pressure cooker. And cooking time is cut in half for each 10 degrees
Celsius we raise the temperature (Professor Lee Hansen, private
communication). I used one of my wife's wide-mouth canning jars,
spray-painted (flat) black on the outside, and it worked great. Food
cooks faster when you use a simple canning jar as a pressure cooker.
However, you can also put a black pot in the plastic bag instead if you
want. But don't use a sealed container with no pressure release like a
mayonnaise jar--it can break as the steam builds up! (I've done it.)

III. How to Build Your Own Solar Funnel Cooker
What You will Need for the Funnel Cooker:
1. A piece of flat cardboard, about 2 feet wide by 4 feet long. (The
length should be just twice the width. The bigger, the better.)
2. Ordinary aluminum foil.
3. A glue such as white glue (like Elmer's glue), and water to mix with

it 50-50. Also, a brush to apply the glue to the cardboard (or a cloth or
paper towel will do). Or, some may wish to use a cheap "spray
adhesive" available in spray cans. You can also use wheat paste.
4. Three wire brads--or small nuts and bolts, or string to hold the funnel
together.
5. For a cooking vessel, I recommend a canning jar ("Ball" wide-mouth
quart jars work fine for me; the rubber ring on the lid is less likely to
melt than for other jars I've found. A two-quart canning jar is available
and works fine for larger quantities of food, although the cooking is
somewhat slower.).
6. The cooking jar (or vessel) should be spray-painted black on the
outside. I find that a cheap flat-black spray paint works just fine. Scrape
off a vertical stripe so that you have a clear glass "window" to look into
the vessel, to check the food or water for boiling.
7. A block of wood is used as an insulator under the jar. I use a piece of
2"X4" board which is cut into a square nominally 4" x 4" by about 2"
thick. (10cm square x 5cm thick.) One square piece of wood makes a
great insulator.
8. A plastic bag is used to go around the cooking-jar and block of wood,
to provide a green-house effect. Suggestions:
-Reynolds" Oven Bag, Regular Size works great: transparent and won't
melt. (Cost about 25 cents each in U.S. grocery stores.)
-Any nearly-transparent HDPE bag (High-density Polyethylene). Look
for "HDPE" stamped on the bag. I've tested HDPE bags which I picked
up for free at my grocery store, used for holding vegetables and fruits.
These are thin, but very inexpensive. Tested side-by-side with an oven
bag in two solar funnels, the HDPE bag worked just as well!
(Caution: we have found that some HDPE bags will melt should they
contact the hot cooking vessel. For this reason, we recommend using
the oven-safe plastic bag wherever possible.)

-An idea attributed to Roger Bernard and applied now to the BYU
Funnel Cooker: place a pot (having a blackened bottom and sides) in a
glass bowl, and cover with a lid. Try for a tight fit around the bottom to
keep hot air trapped inside. The metal pot or bowl should be supported
around the rim only, with an air space all around the bottom (where the
sunlight strikes it). Put a blackened lid on top of the pot. Then simply
place this pot-in-bowl down in the bottom of the funnel--no plastic bag
is needed! This clever method also allows the cook to simply remove
the lid to check the food and to stir. I like this idea - it makes the solar
cooker a lot like cooking over a fire. See Photographs for further
details.
[Image: 02.jpg -- Photo description: This photo shows a Pyrex glass
measuring cup -- looking like it might hold one-half gallon. Inside the
measuring cup is a chrome or stainless steel dish, fitting the sides of the
cup very tightly. The shiny dish is blackened on the outside and still
shiny on the inside. A man is holding the lid for the dish, similarly
blackened.]
Construction Steps
1. Cut a Half-circle out of the cardboard, along the bottom as shown
below. When the funnel is formed, this becomes a full-circle and
should be wide enough to go around your cooking pot. So for a 7"
diameter cooking pot, the radius of the half-circle is 7". For a quart
canning jar such as I use, I cut a 5" radius half-circle out of the