Do fridges work harder with more items to cool?

Question

If there are more items in the fridge does each one cause the fridge to have a higher uptime when maintaining colder temperatures?

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In: Engineering

Answer 1

Each item that is in the fridge holds “energy”. If you place something hot in the fridge, it takes a while to cool the space back to where it was. This is done by the fridge working harder and the energy expended from the other items. This is why you are not supposed to put hot food in the fridge. On the other hand, all of that stored “cold energy” helps the fridge maintain temperature because, once those items are at the desired temperature, the compressor is effectively cooling dead space. It takes more energy to cool an empty fridge than a full one.