DesignThis was the first lab we did for the Outdoor Classroom project. Our goal was to design and create a solar water heater. My group's design was to wrap the inside of a gallon water jug with mylar and to put saran wrap over the open bottom. The bottom of the jug was cut off and so was a widow on the side. We used both plastic and copper tubing. Copper is very conductive, so it heated the water up quickly. The saran wrap trapped heat in the tub and the mylar reflected the sunlight all over the inside of the tub.
ProcessTo test our design we put a liter of water into the tube and left it to sit for 30 minutes. The water's starting temperature was 19 degrees celsius, but when the time was over it had increased to 30 degrees. Our design had a heat gain of 1,381.38 Jules.
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