Experimenting with sun power!

We talked about ways to keep water cool in these hot days.
The children came up with: 'Put the water in a fridge or a freezer, use ice or a cooler, or a thermos flask'. I asked them how we could do it without a fridge or ice.........
We decided to experiment with black and white....

 We  covered bottles with white or silver or black paper and then painted any gaps!

We put very cold water in the bottles and then put them in a very sunny place for 1 hour.
When we tested the water with our hands  the water from the black bottle was MUCH MUCH hotter!
The children called this a 'skin' test!
We decided to try agin with larger containers - we could test with our feet and also use a thermometer

 Sanna and Noor carry the heavy buckets to the sunny area.

 After 1 hour the temperature of the water was 33 degrees celsius in the white bucket and 43 in the black bucket... almost too hot to handle.... !  This is a real energy source right on the doorstep!

We have made questioonaires asking different teachers about what colour cars they have as we think maybe white cars are a good idea in Khartoum!

We also remembered that you can see the 'Zir' along most road sides - the clay pot that keeps the water cool all the time.....mmmmm, so how does this work?

Time for another experiment!