How does an air conditioner cool down a room?
In: 3
Imagine you have a container of bouncy balls that get hot when they’re close to each-other, and get colder when they’re separated. Basically simplified gas molecules.
If you want to cool your room down, do these steps.
1: Take your container of bouncy balls outside and squeeze them all together so the whole container gets hot. Now blow on the container until it cools right down to ambient temperature, this removes the heat energy from the box into the outside air.
2: Walk back into your room with your now squeezed box of balls and release the pressure on the container. All the balls spread out and now the box gets really cold. Blow on the box until it warms up to room temperature. Now your room is a little bit colder than it was.
3: Repeat
The clever part is that this order can be reversed depending on weather you want to heat or cool your room. The location (inside/outside) where you squeeze the bouncy balls will get warmer, and where you release the squeeze will cool down. So the box outside your house and the box on your internal wall will swap who does the squeezing and who does the releasing depending on what temperature you want.
Latest Answers