Some people want to know how a refrigerator works. Others want to know the fate of the universe... [T]he answer to the two questions are related.
-Opening lines from The Refrigerator and the Universe (1993)
The answer to the passage above is thermodynamics - the transmission of energy from one body to another. Energy exchanges happen in the universe, and they happen in your kitchen - especially in the complex compression used to cool the inside of your refrigerator. In their book The Refrigerator and the Universe (1993), Martin and Inge Goldstein explain the three laws of thermodynamics through simple, everyday machines - refrigerators and watches (more specifically a spring-driven wristwatch). For a quick review, the three laws of the thermodynamics are the following:
1. First Law (the law of the conservation of energy) - energy can be transfered into other forms but is indestructible and uncreatable. Colloquially, it is remembered as "energy is neither created nor destroyed." The total energy of the universe will remain the same for all time.*
2. Second Law (the law of entropy) - Heat flows from hot bodies to cold ones. As hot bodies interact with cold ones, the efficiency of any energy transfer is always less than 100%, so disorder in the universe always increases. "Ordered systems tend to disorder while disordered systems tends to stay that way" (Goldstein & Goldstein, pg. 8).
3. Third Law (absolute zero) - energy (molecular movement) stops at absolute zero (0 Kelvin or -273 C or -460 F).
*Einstein's theory of relativity has modified the Newtonian laws of thermodynamics. The theory noted that the universe must either be expanding or contracting - at this moment, it is expanding. The universe will continue to expand forever or will at some point begin to collapse. Because energy is not conserved as the universe expands, the total amount of energy decreases. If the universe were to contract, the total amount of energy would increase (someone explain this concept to the Federal Reserve).
Back to the refrigerator. The Goldsteins explained the importance of "idealization" in science - the imagining of a flawless state to simplify the complexity of phenomena. In 1609, Galileo Galilei saw the craters of the moon, indicating crashes with other objects. In order to understand how moving bodies never stop, he envisioned a frictionless world, where moving bodies never collide. It was first important to understand motion before analyzing friction. Galileo's imagining led to his heliocentric theory - that the sun was the center of our galaxy, not the earth (geocentric theory). In the Enlightenment, philosopher-scientists imagined airless spaces - known as vacuums. The thought led to the creation of the air pump, which sucked air out of a glass container. English painter Joseph Wright of Derby captured the use the device in An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (1768). Women and children recoil in horror as a bird gasps for air while others discuss the event in wonder.
Some decades later, French physicist Nicolas Carnot was contemplating the development of heat engines -devices that convert thermal energy to mechanical work, like a steam engine or gas motor. As the Goldstein's point out, one form of scientific "idealization" is known as the "reversible process" - imagining a system functioning backwards. Carnot imagined heat engines working in reverse - removing heat from a cold region and discarding it elsewhere. He called his mental creation "refrigerators."
Carnot published his ideas in his only work, Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (1824). Ten years later, American inventor and physicist Jacob Perkins brought Carnot's "refrigerators" to life. Perkins patented a vapor-compression machine in 1834. The device compresses a liquid refrigerant (ether at first; then ammonia; now freon), causing the temperature to rise. The liquid eventually becomes gas and evaporates, carrying off heat and producing a cooling effect. The vapor then goes into the condenser, where it is returned to a liquid state, and the process continues. Refrigeration functions on the First and Second laws of thermodynamics. Energy transfers between the varying states of the coolant, and the temperature of these states pulls hot air out of the refrigerator, keeping it cool. Refrigeration only reaches the Third Law if you turn the internal setting up to 11 (that's a Spinal Tap joke).
Vapor compression is the most widely used method for refrigeration and air conditioning. For the first hundred years, vapor-compression refrigeration was a matter of the market and not a domestic appliance. Refrigeration made an impact most promptly on the meat industry. In 1874, French inventor Ferdinand Carre built a large refrigerator for the Paraguay, a ship that transported meat from Argentina to France. Three years later, in 1877, Frenchman Charles Tellier equipped the Frigorifique for the same purpose - to transport meat from Argentina to France. As the gap between farmer and consumer widened in the Industrial Revolution, refrigerators filled an increasingly important role in the marketplace. So important, in fact, that refrigerators became a personal necessity, not just a commercial one.
Up until the mid-twentieth century, most households used "ice boxes" - insulated compartments for food kept cool by a block of ice. Modern refrigerators emerged between 1913 and 1927. Early models were made of wood, which was replaced by metal in the 1920s. In Chicago, Domelre manufctured its first domestic refrigerator in 1913, followed by the Kelvinator in 1918. Frigidaire released its first refrigerators in 1919, and General Electric (GE) entered the market in 1926. GE became a leading refrigerator company in 1939 when it released the first dual-temperature fridge - the common refrigerator model today with a freezer and a produce section.
Despite a competitive atmosphere, refrigerators reached very few households in the 1920s. Only 1-2% of Americans owned a refrigerator in 1925, but that number exponentially grew as the appliance became more affordable. Nearly a decade later, in 1934, the percentage of Americans with a refrigerator jumped to 17%. By the time the United States entered the second World War, the number had skyrocketed to 45%, despite a depression and a scarcity of metal. Today, the percentage of Americans owning a refrigerator has more than doubled - resting at 99.5% of the population. The refrigerator is the most widely owned appliance, and, according to the Goldsteins, it is the most widely available explanation of thermodynamics.
According to the Other White Cube Project, the refrigerator is also the most widely accessible explanation for museums practices - how humans collect, select, organize, and arrange objects into a display.