Nib asked, and Nib — askNib's tutor — drew the answer live at a whiteboard. This is the spoken transcript; enable JavaScript to watch it drawn.
how does a refrigerator work step by step
Here is the surprise: a fridge does not make cold. There is no cold to make. It moves heat from your food out into the kitchen.
That heat leaves through coils on the back. Prop the door open and the room still warms, because the motor's energy ends up as heat too.
Heat flows downhill on its own, so a fridge needs a trick. Sealed pipes carry refrigerant, like R one thirty-four A, which boils at minus twenty-six Celsius.
Step one: the compressor squeezes the vapor hot, hotter than your kitchen. Step two: in the back coils that heat flows out and the gas turns liquid.
Step three: liquid squirts through a tiny valve to low pressure, boils, and turns icy. Step four: in the cold coils it soaks up the food's heat.
So the whole fridge is one idea: electricity runs a pump that carries heat from the food to the kitchen, round and round.
Next time you feel warmth behind your fridge, that is your dinner's heat, on its way out to the kitchen.