89
O ORACLE, DIVINE ME THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION - howst the fuck does a refrigerator work
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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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The key to "how it works" is the phase change from liquid to gas.
Under normal atmospheric pressure, the refrigerant would be liquid at a very low temperature. Compressing it will make it a liquid at a much higher temperature. Then, releasing that liquid from the pressure allows it to become a gas again - but it's not a gas at the higher temperature. As before, when a substance phase changes from liquid to gas, its temperature becomes the temperature at which it would phase change.
Example: The temperature on Venus is about 867 degrees Fahrenheit. You could use water as a refrigerant there. If you compressed steam on Venus to a pressure where it became liquid water, and then released that water from the pressure, it would become steam again, and it would be 212 degrees F when that happened.
This is the same reason that a can of air duster gets cold when you spray it. The compressed liquid in the can becomes a gas, and its temperature becomes the low temperature of its liquid to gas phase change when that happens.
e: It's not just that "when a specific temperature is reached, the substance changes from liquid to gas", it's also "when the substance changes from liquid to gas, the specific temperature is reached". The two things always happen together.