12 July 2011 Why Are Those Arctic Oven Tents Yellow?

Good morning! Today is another overcast day but we are expecting good weather tomorrow. It should be the perfect day for a 6th grade experiment. When Mike Bergin and Brandon Strellis visited Renfroe Middle School in April, Edie in Dr. Parker’s class noticed that the tents that we sleep in are yellow.

She had a great question:

Why are the Arctic Oven tents yellow and not black?

In other words, wouldn’t a black tent be warmer than a yellow tent when you sleep in a cold place like the Greenland Ice Sheet since the color black should absorb more of the Sun's energy?

Awesome question, Edie.

Before trying an experiment, we made some hypotheses:

Many of our 6th graders at Renfroe Middle School thought that the Arctic Oven tents were not black because the inside of the tent would get too hot. Yellow tents might keep the inside of the tent at a cozy temperature.

Brandon thought that the tents were not black because it would be hard to see inside of them without a flashlight. He thought a yellow tent lets in some of the sunlight so you can see inside the tent when it was sunny.

Hannah thought the Arctic Oven tents were not black because it might be hard to find a black tent compared to a bright yellow tent when there is fog or other bad weather conditions.

My hypothesis was the same as many of our 6th graders. I thought that a black tent would be too hot inside but a yellow tent might keep it at a comfortable temperature.

Why do you think that Arctic Oven tents are yellow and not black?

How would you set up this experiment?

Read my July 13, 2011 journal to see how we set up this experiment and our results.

Oh, by the way, we are almost finished with the igloo. Here are a few pictures of our progress.

Brandon’s idea to build a model of an igloo has really saved us a lot of time. We were able to work out some problems, using tiny igloo blocks instead of the big ones we are using now. Great thinking, Brandon!

Key Concepts:

Hypotheses – educated guesses