Question 10: Can a room be cooled by leaving the door of an electric refrigerator open?

ANSWER

No the room can’t be cooled by leaving the door of a fridge open. Rather the effect of doing so would be the other way round, that is, the room would become warmer instead of cooling. In order to understand this, we know that a refrigerator is like heat engine working in the reverse order. This means it extracts heat from the cold body and transfers it to the hot body. Practically, it absorbs heat from its own interior (thus making it cool) and sending it to its surrounding. In the given situation when the door of the fridge is left open, the room becomes both the interior and surrounding at the same time. The refrigerator absorbs heat from the room, making it cool. At the same time, it rejects heat to room (as surrounding) and making it warm. The compressor of the fridge does some work as well, which also appears as heat that further increases the temperature of the room.