Science Report
11/10/2014
Christiane Heinicke
Solar Cooker
We started a cooker experiment at 7:55 am today, with the sun relatively low on the horizon. Water was boiling after approximately one hour. The second pot of today was started at 9:23 am and boiled at 10:11 am. Final temperatures were around 95 deg C.
Instead of taking a break, I had to return outside with a fellow crew member in order to secure the cooker from the wind that had picked up within tens of minutes after re-entering the hab.
Having strapped it down tightly, I was able to perform another measurement just after noon. The original purpose was to test the freshly arrived helmets; but the experiment turned out to be a stability test for the cooker, with high winds and gusts up to 40mph. The heat loss to the pot however, was so high that the water did not boil, it "only" achieved a temperature of around 92 deg C.
At the end of the experiment we transfered the cooker (that had survived all wind blows) to the Greenhab, for further tests in the following days.
No temperature probes were harmed in the making of this report today.