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So that we can know whats inside without opening the fridge.
Aerogel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Jun 22 2011]
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Annotation:
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No more dead bodies in the fridge.! |
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Transparent doors on refrigerators are certainly Baked; bottle
fridges in bars are commonplace. Those doors are of plastic
rather than glass, though. |
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Using triple glazing, coated glass and argon filling, it might be
possible to engineer a wall structure with a k value close to that
of the foams currently used; but it would be a lot more
expensive, and very heavy. |
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My guess is that, if such a fridge will sell like hot cakes. People don't care much about insulation/efficiency; They care about looks. |
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But it would look horrible - all you'd see is a massive, random pile of chilled food, plastic containers, old vegetables, pools of water and half-empty packets of cheese. Whereas when I look at my fridge I see a flawless, gleaming, 2-metre-high piece of brushed stainless steel. |
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hmm... let's see what condiments I will use today.. |
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Rats! Now I have to find another place to store my collection of severed heads. Bun anyway [+]. |
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Even though the thought of a beautiful glass fridge seems nice at first, [hippo] is so right about what it really would look like! Besides it would be dark in there unless one had a light that stayed on when the door was closed! |
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We've been here before. I remember curiosity about why i looked at glass fridges all day on this very website. |
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It would require the interior to be kept very neat but that wouldn't be a bad thing in itself. Actually, something occurs to me about this: a fridge made with the wrong kind of glass would be poorly insulated but a CCTV fridge with screens on all external surfaces would be - huh? I can't get my head together about what the difference would be. |
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well, now one can figure out if food has gone bad ( ex. caught fungus) easily. He/she does not have to keep checking it explicitly. |
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//People don't care much about
insulation/efficiency; They care about looks.// |
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In such a world, I would store my raw meat inside a
supermodel. |
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CCTV wouldn't have that 3D parallaxability thing going on. (my new word) |
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So [VJW] - how exactly does it help you figure out if your food has gone bad? Like I said, it's dark in there and if your food is in a container, what is the difference? |
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//if your food is in a container// |
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Make it transperent plastic container. Yeah, that should do the trick. |
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But, none of thoese fridges are entirely made up of glass.. This will make a significant difference in perception of the product. |
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I wonder exactly how well hotcakes sell anymore? You don't exactly see new IHOPs being built. Methinks we need a new similie. Like iphone apps, Google stock, or credit default swaps. |
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should that be - losing my mind not hind! |
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I assumed //hind// was some kind of obscure reference to back bacon. |
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// But, none of thoese fridges are entirely made up of glass.. This will make a significant difference in perception of the product. // |
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How do you know it'll make a halfpennyworth of difference? |
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And how do you propose to overcome the problems that have kept anyone else from making an entirely-glass fridge? |
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You've got a WIBNI that only you think would be nice, that's pretty much already made, that's pretty obvious, that must be difficult to make completely out of glass, and no method of making it. |
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Here's what I want something like: "Place a giant glass cylinder over a cylindrical set of shelves, with a hoisting mechanism to lift the glass when access is desired. Put the cold air input on the hoist line so cold air is entering at the top." |
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See, that has at least a nod toward a method. Otherwise, you are just wishing for a glass fridge. |
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I am finally fishboning. [-] |
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This is quite possible, if the insulation used is "aerogel". Which happens to be the best physical-substance insulator around, and can even be fairly transparent. Not to mention that aerogel is also mostly silicon dioxide, the same as glass. The main drawback is that so far aerogel is hideously expensive. |
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And unreasonably fragile. |
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And aerogel sucks up liquids like crazy. |
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What would insulate better, vacuum or dry Argon ? |
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/In such a world, I would store my raw meat inside a supermodel./ |
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I volunteer for the beta testing of such a world. |
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I thought the point of this was to finally answer the question about what happens to the light when you shut the door... |
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[8th of 7], the problem with vacuum is that the area of glass, with vacuum on one side, and air pressure on the other, would not be strong enough, unless the glass was super-thick/heavy. And argon can do "convection" heat-transfer in-between glass panes, unless there are lots of separators between the panes to interfere with the motion of the gas. But then the separators can simply physically conduct heat between the panes.... |
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[RayfordSteele] and [baconbrain], neither of your objections to aerogel should be a problem if it is sealed inside glass panes. Of course I admit the entire fridge could still be fragile, but that's not really the issue here. People have been dealing with large glass panes for a long time, and mostly know to be more careful around them than when elswhere. |
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You could use a vacuum, at least if the glass were
reasonably thick and the areas were not too vast.
The loading is about one ton per square foot, and
there are glass floor-panels which can handle loads
of this order easily. For larger areas, you would
need either very thick glass or (much better) short
stubby spacers to take the load. The spacers
compromise insulation, but you'd still have way,
way better insulation than a regular fridge has. |
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The main reason that vacuum-panels aren't used is
that it's not easy to make them completely leak-
proof cheaply, and there's no real point in having
that level of thermal insulation in a fridge.
Opening the door once will waste way more heat. |
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Incidentally, the Dutch architect Konrad
Hoogenvelt died trying to use "vacuum glass" in
1983. He was more a designer than an engineer,
and designed and built a house which was
transparent and almost perfectly (he argued)
isolated from the outside world. He said it was
meant to expose the
occupants whilst insulating them, or some such
tombollockry. |
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Most of the structure was built from glass slabs
which were about 3ft square and contained a
vacuum in the middle (they were made as single
pieces, like a flat thick-walled vacuum tube). |
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It was probably all just about OK, except that the
panels were bonded to eachother with a very rigid
polycarbonate resin. |
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The presumption (after the accident) was that
one panel had failed or been damaged and, on
imploding, the stresses had triggered the collapse
of adjacent panels, and so on in a catastrophic
chain reaction which was reported as sounding
"like a bomb blast". The end result was that most
of the building was basically reduced to powder,
along with its sole occupant (well, he was more of
a mush than a powder). The site was closed off
for more than six months while people argued
over how to clear the debris, since the surviving
panels could have shattered and imploded at any
time; eventually they "defused" the remains using
a steamroller with a cab protected by bullet-proof
polycarbonate. |
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So maybe vacuum-panelled fridges are not such a
great idea. |
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isn't the bigger problem spoilage and/or heating
from all the incoming light? |
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Heavy velvet drapes around the outside? |
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//Incidentally, the Dutch architect Konrad Hoogenvelt...// *citation needed |
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Would it be completely outside the realms of sensibility to make a glass fridge
containing a large block of very clear ice, with a vacuum inside it, accessible via
an airlock? |
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// *citation needed// I don't think Hoogenvelt was
in any state to receive one. |
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[ ] the idea sucks except as a bar-fridge ("ice cube"), but I like [bigsleep]'s song. |
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Darnit, [MaxB], I Googled "Konrad Hoogenvelt". Most amusing. |
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