If I put an air-tight container into the fridge, how do the contents still get cold?

Question

If I put an air-tight container into the fridge, how do the contents still get cold?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Coldness is just heat being leeched out of something.

Heat doesn’t only transfer through air. It also transmits through materials, some better than others. Plastic isn’t great at transferring heat, but it’s not terrible either. So when you put a container in the fridge, the container is losing heat to the refrigerator, and in turn, the food loses heat to the container, until they reach equilibrium at the fridge’s set temperature.