A first year engineering student sits next to his homemade solar oven as he keeps track of its temperature on Wed., Oct. 5, 2022 at the University of Arizona Mall.
Matching navy blue shirts and the smell of burning duct tape mixed with the smell of biscuits baking filled the University of Arizona Mall as around 600 engineering students took a hand at baking.
The students enthusiastically grabbed a bag of biscuits from their professors and quickly began their study. In preparation for this day, students had to build a solar oven using only $20.
The purpose is to learn how to create a cost effective design while still reaching a predicted temperature. If students reach their predicted temperature, then their biscuit will be baked.
For 12 years, the Craig M. Berge Engineering Design Program has held their Solar Oven throw down. The time honored tradition marks some students' first hands-on experience into the engineering program.
VIEW LARGER A solar oven modeled after a cactus sits absorbing the heat from the sun to increase in temperature on Wed., Oct. 12, 2022 on the University of Arizona Mall. The students placed an image of their favorite professor on the oven. “I’ve never really done anything super hands on and made something super cool like this,” said freshman Kaden Thomas. “I was pretty excited.”
Thomas was one of a group of students who decorated their oven. His group, CACTUS, designed their model based on where they came from and the terrain they are in.
“I'm from Colorado. We have team members from Arizona, California and Texas,” Thomas said. “We just made an acronym that was CACTUS. That’s C-A-C-T, us. Then we designed our oven as a cactus. The reflector is a pink flower and the base is the cactus.”
The team loved their professor, Umar Amjad, so much that they included his picture in the design.
Amjad is a lead instructor and is one of 11 instructors helping with the event. He loves to see his students’ excitement for science every year.
VIEW LARGER Bella Raguse, from team Easy Bake Oven, writes down her observations from the experiment on a document on Wed., Oct. 12th, 2022 at the University of Arizona Mall. “Oh, it feels great,” Amjad said. “It gives me confidence that I'm doing a good job and we work as a team. I always tell my students like, apart from exams and grading and all that, we are one team.”
Students in Ahmjad’s section dove head first into their projects, creating designs from all different perspectives, like student Kyle Carlsen. His team took their inspiration from their childhood.
“We went with the Easy Bake Oven, something that a lot of people had in their house,” Carlsen said. “We’re all very childish people so we thought we’d touch our inner child.”
This is team Easy Bake Oven’s second appliance after their first one was destroyed the day before. Teammate Bella Raguse says their mistake was using Scotch duct tape.
VIEW LARGER One team took inspiration from the movie Madagascar and incorporated it into their design on Wed., Oct. 5, 2022 at the University of Arizona Mall. “It melted on our temperature sensor and you could smell the burning duct tape,” Raguse said. “It was like smoking on the inside a little bit.”
Their other team member, Arissa Fimbres, noted that they “did a little too good last time.”
They are hopeful this one will hold up since they changed brands. But now, their oven was not heating up at as fast of a rate as before. Their goal is to reach 201 degrees celsius in 50 minutes.
“Since we have a limited time period, we'd much rather it just kind of combust into flames than it gradually go up so that we can reuse it,” Carlsen said.
As the team waits to record a new number every five minutes, they occasionally adjusted the crowns they wore. Fimbres made them, modeling them after a sun that was drawn during one of their study sessions.
“Kyle drew a sun and was like, ‘oh, I need to make it look cool.’ So, we put on some sunglasses and now that’s kind of been like our team logo,” Fimbres said. “We even have it on our oven.”
VIEW LARGER Kyle Carlsen, Bella Raguse and Arissa Fimbres (left to right) from team Easy Bake Oven pose for a photo next to their solar oven on Wed., Oct. 5, 2022 at the University of Arizona Mall. This is their second oven after their first one melted the day before. In the end, team Easy Bake Oven did not reach their predicted temperature, but they did finish with a biscuit… that they could not eat.
“The middle is soft and squishy but the layer of burntness is so thick you can’t really get to the middle,” Fimbres says while hitting the biscuit against their oven.
But, at least this time their oven did not melt.
VIEW LARGER Student Bella Raguse opens the chamber of the oven to find that the biscuit they were baking has burnt on Wed., Oct. 5, 2022 at the University of Arizona Mall. Team member Arissa Fimbres was planning to try the biscuit before she noticed that it was "hard like a rock." 
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