Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

So I'm in grade eight and for my science fair project I'm making a solar panel air heater, ( which I got from this site) but I was wondering how I could make the same thing only using popcans so I could add some recycling information into my project. The problem is, that every other site i look on, the popcans are used for big projects for outside. Is there a simpler version, that by following the same baseline of the one on this site (see Solar Air Heater) I could make a simple project with popcans.

If you think about the solar room heater works, it uses black surfaces to absorb the sun's energy, and then passes room air over the warm surfaces. You ought to be able to come up with something similar using pop cans.

*Carefully* using tin snips, cut the bottom off a can. With a second can, cut off both ends. Do that a few times until you have enough cans that when laid end to end, are just about as long as the window. With one more, cut off the bottom. When you place all the cans together, you should end up with one long 'can' that still has ends, but the drinking holes are open. If you spray painted the insides of the cans black (do it really well), taped them together and then spraypainted the whole assembly black, you'd have what might be a good heat collector. Make a few of these so you can cover the width of the window.

Tape them together into one big collector, then make up some sort of baffle to put at one end that routes incoming air through the cans. If this works (and I don't know - I'm just thinking out loud here), that should get warm air blowing out the other end. It's the same general principle as the one on the site but using pop cans.

If you decide to explore this, maybe start small scale with just one can - paint it black and see if it gets warm in the sun. Blow air through it and see if the air gets warm. Then scale up to a bigger assembly. Please write back if you decide to try this and let us know how it went.

Howard

Thanks HowardE we did try this and it worked pretty well. The cans were hard to cut but once we finished it went pretty smoothly. Thanks for the advice!

Paigeypoo37, that's excellent! I'm glad it worked for you. Thanks for writing back. If you have a few pictures you can share, please send them to [email protected] - we love to put projects up on our blog.

Howard