I gotta know how my ice cream stays cold
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There’s a scientific thing called the Carnot Cycle. Which is a name for a thermodynamic principle. If you compress something it gets hot. If you let the temperature go to equilibrium the pressurized stuff is now room temp. Then if you release the pressure, it gets cold. Then you let it go back to equilibrium room temp. Then repeat.
How this works in the fridge is you’ve got 4 parts. A compressor, a heat exchanger, a throttle, and another heat exchanger. All of these are connected by a series of tubes. And these tubes are filled with a substance that will stay liquid at high temps and low temps. Typically Freon.
The compressor compresses the Freon, making it hot, it also pumps the hot Freon to a heat exchanger on the back of the fridge where the Freon exchanges heat with the ambient air and cools to room temp (this is why the back of your fridge is hot) then the Freon goes into the fridge and then through a throttle. A throttle is a device that lowers pressure and increases speed in a moving liquid. The lower pressure causes the Freon to get cold. It’s then run through another heat exchanger inside the fridge where it absorbs all the heat in the fridge bringing it back to equilibrium. This is what causes the fridge to get cold. The Freon then goes out the back of the fridge and back into the compressor and the cycle repeats.
Typically there’s some other stuff attached, like a thermometer that tells the compressor to turn on and off at certain temperatures, and fans by the heat exchangers to get them to exchange heat more quickly. That stuff helps, definitely makes it work better, but they arent strictly necessary.
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