Overview: We are looking at solar homes in order to learn more about designing homes for solar efficient desert living. Most solar homes are designed for northern climates and simply attempt to trap the most radiant energy. For this lab, we want to design a home that stays cool in the sun.

Begin by reading about the desert house at the local resource The Desert Botanical garden. You may also want to visit this house as a portfolio project to get ideas for your dream house project. This and other experimental homes in the Phoenix area are looking at ways to build homes that conserve energy.

Introduction: This is the last full lab you will be doing this year !! At this point I expect you to be able to put together an experiment of your own design. These are general guidelines read them carefully before beginning.

Purpose: The purpose of this experiment is to determine how rapidly the sun can heat the air trapped in your " "home".

Procedure: Begin by building two solar home models. You will run your experiment with one of these homes as your control. The window will be open and the sun will shine into the home. As your variable choose from the following list of questions and build a second home to learn the answer to your questions.

• Does the color of a home effect its solar gain? use a variety of colors for this test.
• Does an awning or overhanging porch protect a home from the sun's rays enough to keep it cooler?
• Does the area around your home effect its heat gain ? In other words, is a home cooler if surrounded by grass or by concrete?
• Does a home built with thicker walls heat up less? Use cardboard for this test.

Some general guidelines to keep us all working with common procedures so we can more easily discuss results...

All homes must be built alike for us to compare data. We will use a common template to create a home of given dimensions.

All homes must face the sun, be aware of shadows.

Set cardboard bases or books under your house to protect it from soil or ground temperature variations. Tape the house to the base if it is windy.

Set the thermometer into the house so that it can be read without removing it. You may open the window to read the thermometer.

Be careful with the thermometer it is glass.

We will use the computer to graph your results if there is time.

Before begining your lab write up a procedure, using the lab format here.

Data:

Designate a timer and a recorder. You should run the experiment twice. Each trial should last twelve minutes and temperatures will need to be recorded every minute. Make your own data table on a separate piece of paper.

So our graphs have the same scale, you will record on the data sheets given to you. To keep yourself straight I suggest two different colored pens. At the end of the tests you will have a total of 4 lines on your graphs.

Discussion Questions:

1. What did you learn from this lab that you might use in your dream house project?
2. Did you ahve any unexpected results?
3. Which house stayed the coolest in this lab in your section?