ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Environmental chamber

An environmental chamber is like a big room that can be used to test how things are affected by different kinds of weather conditions. Imagine that you have a toy car and you want to see how it will work in the snow, in the rain, or in the sun. If you put the toy car in a real snowy, rainy or sunny place, it can be hard to know what is happening because there are too many things going on at once.

The environmental chamber can help you out because it can make it seem like it's snowing, raining, or sunny inside the room without having to actually go outside. It's like a magical room that can change the weather inside of it! Scientists use it to test and study things like how hot things get in the sun, how much water is lost in dry air, and how long materials will last in different conditions.

The chamber is controlled by a computer that can set the temperature, humidity, light, and other factors inside the room. It has special tools that measure the conditions so that scientists can study and measure how things react to different environments. It's like being able to play make-believe with different weather conditions so that we can learn about how things work in the real world.