Inspired by [Flying Toaster]'s Demon Fridge I thought that instead of coming up with a material that lets infrared radiation pass out, but not in, why not build a lobster-trap-inspired fridge out of mirrors? A quick Google search found that some gents at MIT in 1998 created a cheap, dielectric mirror which very effectively reflects (refrectively?) infrared radiation. [link] Fifteen years later MIT announce another perfect mirror which is an enhancement of the first one I believe (more perfect perhaps?) [link]
Build a box shaped fridge lined with dielectric mirrors adding reflective parabolic cones extruding out the ends. (Normally lobster traps have the cones intruding into the trap to make it easy for the creatures to find their way in but hard to get out - we want the opposite effect here.)
The light and infrared radiation rapidly bounces around inside the Lobster Trap Fridge until the photons strike the parabolic cones which line the little buggers up and eject them through the hole in the opposing cone. Heat energy leaves but has a hard time coming back into the unit. Insulate with whatever you have handy that is effective and cheap.-- AusCan531, Sep 21 2013 1998 MIT Perfect Mirror - including for Infrared http://www.nytimes....gewanted=all&src=pm [AusCan531, Sep 21 2013] 2013 MIT Perfecter Mirror http://www.extremet...irst-perfect-mirror [AusCan531, Sep 21 2013] <ahem> Maxwell_27s_20Demon_20Refrigerator [FlyingToaster, Sep 21 2013] Maxwell's Demon Refrigerator Maxwell_27s_20Demon_20RefrigeratorSorry [FT] for incorrect attribution in my first draft. [AusCan531, Sep 21 2013, last modified Sep 22 2013] Discussion about focussing heat plus a new word 'phonons' http://web.mit.edu/...ike-light-0111.htmlShows that heat can be focused. [AusCan531, Sep 22 2013] Speaking of Lobsters.... http://xkcd.com/1268/ [AusCan531, Sep 23 2013] Speaking of Lobsters.... https://www.youtube...watch?v=QadhPRU0Dn8 [normzone, Sep 29 2013] <opens fridge door>
“Oh my god! It’s full of lobsters”-- pocmloc, Sep 21 2013 “Thank god! It’s full of lobsters”-- AusCan531, Sep 21 2013 For the record, Maxwell's Demon Refrigerator was not my idea, though I wish it had been.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 21 2013 Reflective lobsters!-- pocmloc, Sep 21 2013 What good is a deep-frozen lobster ? You have to thaw it and then cook it before it's edible ...-- 8th of 7, Sep 21 2013 Freezing lobster meat ruins it. For that matter, so does boiling it or any if the other awful things people do to lobster in the name of cuisine. The only proper way to cook lobster is by steaming it, preferably over hot firepit stones covered with a bed of fresh seaweed and mussels. I can't stand bivalves myself, but a mussel-steamed softshell is a meal fit for a king. So I beg of the world, stop abusing the lobsters we send you by cooking them with inferior methods or adulterating them with other ingredients. Do the right thing and steam them bugs.-- Alterother, Sep 21 2013 If one could genetically modify the lobster to have a layer of frequency-doubling crystals under its carapace, and make the carapace appropriately transparent, one would produce a self-refrigerating lobster, which would be much less unsatisfactory.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 21 2013 I gave my glow-in-the-dark lobster to a woman on the east coast to give to her husband - they had an in joke that required one and she was unable to locate one - the only source she could find was me commenting on the 'bakery that I had one.
She contacted me and offered to buy it, I was unable to locate it, a year later I found it and gifted her with it.
Oh yeah, what was the idea again?-- normzone, Sep 21 2013 [bigsleep], you are correct. The previous time was in 2010. Looks like I'm on schedule to tell it again in 2016.
Is your user name from the Phillip Marlowe novel?-- normzone, Sep 22 2013 What is a glow-in-the-dark lobster and how can you misplace one ?-- FlyingToaster, Sep 22 2013 Image searches fail me at the moment, but all you have to do is push it far enough under the bed.-- normzone, Sep 22 2013 While I'm pretty sure that my little heat-expelling box wouldn't actually freeze the lobsters or anything else one kept inside it, I wonder if they'd be chilled a bit. On the face of it, a chilling effect should occur, but my intuition says the box would just sit there looking at me while staying exactly at room temperature.
After having a read of my last link discussing phonons I'd be interested in hearing what some of you smart guys [spidermother et al] think about the concept. I note that one other commenter on this article also proposed usng this property for refrigeration.
I suspect that the researchers, or at least the journalists, are using the phrase 'perfect mirror' a bit too glibly. Otherwise one could close up the box during the day then release the light at nighttime.-- AusCan531, Sep 22 2013 It is possible to use one-way heat flow to keep things cool, but not quite in the way that commenter suggests. Cellars, for example, allow air to flow only when it's colder out than in; the cellar thus stays closer to the lowest outdoor temperature than to the average outdoor temperature.
High-tech heat diodes should do the same - a box or building in a desert (cold nights, hot days) could be kept cool. But it won't work to make ice in the tropics. Allowing heat to flow in one direction only doesn't mean heat will flow uphill.-- spidermother, Sep 22 2013 //Allowing heat to flow in one direction only doesn't mean heat will flow uphill//
But the light energy would mostly all find its way out compared to the little bit finding its way in through the 2 small openings.-- AusCan531, Sep 23 2013 Wow, [AusCan531], I just finished reading that comic. You are quick.-- normzone, Sep 23 2013 I subscribe to Terry Pratchett's theory of fine cuisine, which is that it exists wherever people have nothing to eat, so they drag the delta, peek under rocks, peel the bark from trees, and make a delicious meal from what is basically, when you get right down to it, garbage.
That is how things like lobster became delicacies.-- Alterother, Sep 24 2013 Yeah, I have a good friend, my freediving mentor, who grew up on Catalina Island. When it was off-season for tourists, there was no money for food, and you ate what you could pull from the shallows. He still loves lobster, but he described being sick of it as a kid because that was all there was to eat.
American history indicates that it was poor peoples food for a long time - and I wonder who was hungry enough to eat oysters.-- normzone, Sep 29 2013 random, halfbakery