Temperature in a Locked Car During Summer

On a hot summer day, have you ever stepped inside your car and felt like it was hard to breathe? Now imagine how you would have felt if you had to be in that hot car for hours with no way of cooling down and no fresh air?
 
Did you know that 38 children die on average every year as a result of either being trapped or left in cars during the summer?1  If the temperature outside is 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature inside a car can go up to 99 degrees in just 20 minutes!2

I wonder how people can forget their kids or pets in a car. How can someone be so distracted that they forget their child or their dear pet? I read that this usually happens because the parents or owners are accustomed to a certain routine and one day the routine changes and the parents forget and when they come back to the car, it’s too late. 

Do you think that people should be punished for leaving their child or pet in the car? I think that the loss itself is a huge punishment. And if you punish that person, it will be like a double punishment. Instead of punishing that person, we should be finding ways to deal with this problem so that it doesn’t happen ever in the first place. 

The good thing is, some people have already invented things to help parents remember that their child is in the car. One 11 year old kid named Andrew Pelham from Nashville, TN invented the E-Z Baby Saver with Rainbow Loom and duct tape and made a long string. One end of the  Baby Saver attaches to the driver’s door. The other end attaches to the back of the driver’s seat. So when the driver opens the door, he can’t get out unless he takes the Baby Saver off, which reminds him that the child or pet is there.

There are also two other inventions in the market. They are both special car seats. One of them detects the temperature inside the car and warns your phone if the temperature gets too high. The other is where there is a device on the car seat buckle so that if the seat is buckled in and the ignition is turned off, it will beep.
 
I was thinking about all this and discussing it with my family and we thought that the heat inside a locked car was enough to cook something - literally! I asked my mom if I could bake cookies in the car instead of an oven. She told me that someone has already done this before. I still wanted to do it so we went ahead with it.

First, I made cookie dough. 



Making cookie dough with my sister

Then, I took a thermometer that is used to measure the temperature outside and put it in the car. 


Start Temperature

I put it in the car next to the cookies. A few hours later, the thermometer read NEGATIVE 20F while the temperature outside was only 73 degrees! I was wondering why it was so cold in the car. Then I realized that it was so hot that the needle swung around completely.

After 20 min, outside temp. is 73 degrees F.
Thermometer has swung around so it looks like it is cold but it is around 140F.

So really, it was very hot in the car! When I took the cookies out of the car, they were ready to eat.

I would not allow any cars with children or pets left alone in them on my Cool Lane.