DEVELOPMENT REPORT – Solar Cookers
DEVELOPMENT REPORT – Solar Cookers
By Jill Moss 1
Broadcast: Monday, March 28, 2005
I'm Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English Development Report.
Millions of people around the world cook their food over a smoky fire every day. It is often difficult to find wood for the fire. People who do not have wood must spend large amounts of money on cooking fuel. However, there is a much easier way to cook food using energy from the sun.
Solar cookers, or ovens 3, have been used for centuries. A Swiss scientist made the first solar oven 2 in seventeen sixty-seven. Today, people are using solar cookers in many countries around the world. People use solar ovens to cook food and to heat drinking water to kill bacteria and other harmful organisms 4.
There are three kinds of solar ovens. The first is a box cooker. It is designed with a special wall that shines or reflects sunlight into the box. Heat gets trapped under a piece of glass or plastic covering the top of the cooker. A box oven is effective for slow cooking of large amounts of food.
The second kind of solar oven is a panel 5 cooker. It includes several flat walls, or panels 6, that directly reflect the sun's light onto the food. The food is inside a separate container of plastic or glass that traps heat energy. People can build panel cookers quickly and with very few supplies. They do not cost much. In Kenya, for example, panel cookers are being manufactured 7 for just two dollars.
The third kind of solar oven is a parabolic cooker. It has rounded walls that aim sunlight directly into the bottom of the oven. Food cooks quickly in parabolic ovens. However, these cookers are hard to make. They must be re-aimed often to follow the sun. Parabolic cookers can also cause burns and eye injuries if they are not used correctly.
You can make solar ovens from boxes or heavy paper. They will not catch fire. Paper burns at two hundred thirty-two degrees Celsius 8. A solar cooker never gets that hot. Solar ovens cook food at low temperatures over long periods of time. This permits people to leave food to cook while they do other things.
To learn more about solar cooking, you can write to Solar Cookers International. The address is nineteen nineteen Twenty-First Street, Sacramento, California, nine-five-eight-one-four, USA. Or you can visit the group's Internet Web site. The address is www.solarcooking.org.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill Moss. I'm Gwen Outen.
- Moss grows on a rock.苔藓生在石头上。
- He was found asleep on a pillow of leaves and moss.有人看见他枕着树叶和苔藓睡着了。
- You put food inside an oven to cook it.你把食物放进烤箱里热一下。
- She baked bread in an oven.她用烤炉烤面包。
- Bakers bake in huge ovens. 面包师用大烤炉烤面包。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- Cleaning ovens is a real fag. 清洗烤箱是一件累人的活。 来自辞典例句
- The organisms can be divided into discrete categories. 有机体可分为许多互不相联的种类。
- The cell is the unit of which all living organisms are composed. 细胞是构成一切生物的单位。
- The unusual control panel on the walls caught our attention.墙上不同寻常的控制板引起了我们的注意。
- The panel of judges included several well-known writers.评判小组中包括几位知名作家。
- One of the glass panels in the front door was cracked. 前门的一块方玻璃破裂了。
- Make sure the panels are treated with a wood preservative. 确保镶板用木材防腐剂处理过。
- a news story manufactured by an unscrupulous journalist 一位不道德的记者编造的一篇报道
- We want the machine manufactured to our own spec. 我们要求这台机器按我们自己的规格来制造。