I used Mom's solar oven for my science fair this year. It turned out well. I did a lot of days worth of experiments and it seemed that I discovered something real, and useful. Dad taught me how to use excel, and how to look for trends between variables. Also, since I had to keep track of so many different things,I found when an exception helps prove a rule.

It seems like certain directions of pointing the oven result in much better cooking. The season and day light savings time make a difference, too.

Here's the whole board

My full data set was pretty complex:

I looked hard for an effect from oven direction (measured with Riley's compass) on oven temperature:

It appears that oven direction matters, but it is not all that matters:

Cloud cover, that I estimated by eye, was the most predictive. A pretty impressive line, huh?

I also looked at effects of other parts of the weather (which, surprisingly, didn't matter much!), using this cool website from the NOAA.

Judges seemed to like it. I won for my school, and then also won a first place trophy at districts and at North Texas regionals got honorable mention. I was nervous before the district fair, because I had to present my work in person. And, there were a lot of other projects that were really good. But it ended up being a lot of fun. Some younger kids were looking at my project after it won, so maybe they'll help make solar power work better for our future energy needs.