Nashville students build solar oven to fight world hunger

"We call it a hybrid-barrel-panel design because it's a cylinder but it also incorporates the panels to get the sun to go into the middle," said Metro Nashville high school student, Catherine Wright.

Wright is part of a program called "School For Science and Math at Vanderbilt" or SSMV.

Students spend one day a week, for all four years, learning about science and math.

"So we're all in high school. But on that one day a week we come and do a lot of interdisciplinary science. Our group was tasked with building this solar oven," she said.

Lesa Brown is one of their instructors.

"It's bigger than I thought it would be," Brown said. "I'm not sure we envisioned it will be taller than us when we finished it."

The project has real-world applications, like helping a school in Kenya that operates with with little to no electricity.

The students will continue to test the prototype. If the oven preforms well, the students say they will ship it overseas.