Sun Juicer Part I

by James Wampler
(Shelbyville, Ky. USA)

I mentioned last week about a KickStarter solar cooker that I supported! It has arrived! I put together the solar concentrator today, and will be assembling the base of it as I get time this week.

I would like to spend some time over the break playing around with various ways of making different solar cookers. I am most interested in parabolic cookers because of their immediate power/demonstration possibilities.

I would like to find a way for students to build parabolic cookers, but that might be a bit ambitious. Hopefully the rest of my materials will arrive this week and I can begin playing with them over winter break.

The Sun Juicer is pretty simple in its construction, which gives me hope for bringing a similar concept into a middle school classroom. The tabs that are used to construct the solar concentrator are a little fiddly, but they are pretty "cave-man" in their simplicity.

I would suggest assembling the unit with some latex gloves to avoid transferring oils from your hand.

It might be advisable to construct a small windbreak for the back of the unit if you live in an area that experiences high winds. The unit is LIGHT (Camping?) and the reflector could easily turn inside out.