Laptops For Less Blog

The Purpose and Function of Refrigerators

Most everyone in the western world has indulged in an ice cold drink, or a bit of ice cream on a hot day. We can all thank refrigerators and freezers for these beverages and treats. Not long ago you had to be quite wealthy, or well connected, to get a drink chilled with just a few ice cubes. In fact, once upon a time huge fortunes were made transporting large cubes of ice around the world to sell to the wealthy. Now, most of us take refrigeration for granted.

Long before refrigeration, preserving food was a tough job. You had to salt food and bury other foods in a snow drift and hope that animals didn’t get to it first. So, to keep your kitchen stocked with the essentials you had to work at it. Refrigerators are one of the inventions that changed how the world conducts their daily lives. Nowadays, we can preserve food much easier. This means we don’t really have to worry about food-bourne illnesses like we did in the past.

Refrigeration keeps our food supplies more stable also. For example, a gallon of milk lasts a couple of weeks in the fridge whereas it may only last a couple of hours on the counter. This is a big deal. You no longer have to keep a cow in the backyard if you want a spot of milk!

Refrigeration is also important when it comes to another appliance. The air conditioner is another marvelous technology. Around 5 percent of all the electricity used in the United States gets used to keep homes cool. This is
pretty neat considering the principle behind most refrigeration is simple. In fact, it can be described in two sentences: When liquid evaporates it absorbs heat in the process. When you want to get rid of the heat you need to coax liquid to convert it to its gaseous state.

The primary reason to keep a refrigerator is to keep food cold. If you want your food to stay fresh longer, you must have cold temperatures. The whole refrigeration concept is to slow down bacteria activity in food. All food contains bacteria. However, using refrigeration slows down the spoiling process.

As mentioned earlier, bacteria spoils milk in around two to three hours if the milk gets left out on the kitchen counter at room temperature. If you reduce the temperature of the milk it stays fresh for at least a week or two. A
refrigerator decreases bacteria activity. In fact, by freezing milk you can stop bacteria growth altogether. Frozen milk can last for months!

Have you ever poured rubbing alcohol on your skin? If so, you know it feels very cold. This liquid isn’t refrigerated, so how is it so cold? Alcohol evaporates at room temperature the way water evaporates at low temperatures in an oven. As the liquid evaporates it absorbs the heat on the skin’s surface. This makes the skin cooler. In a refrigerator a special coolant called refrigerant gets trapped inside a series of coils. As a circuit runs through the coils, it changes it back and forth from liquid to gas.

If you’re looking for a replacement refrigerator parts or a spare refrigerator part you should buy them from a reputable online merchant like LaptopsForLess.com. We have a huge selection of refrigerator parts in stock, at very reasonable prices [often a fraction of the cost at a bricks and mortar store]. Brands stocked include: Bosch, Fisher Paykel, Frigidaire, General Electric, Icon, LG, Maytag, Panasonic, Roper, Samsung, Sanyo, Whirlpool and more…