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Comment by throwawaylaptop | Hacker News Reader

I always ponder how many people have a refrigerator in their home their entire life, and what percentage of them don't know how it works.

I've asked several gfs, and they don't have even a hint of how it works. Guy friends do a bit better but not as well as you'd think.

So yes, people live their entire lives not asking obvious questions.

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I’d bet it’s 1 in 10, I doubt I would know the answer if I didn’t work in an HVAC adjacent field.

The answer is ‘vapor compression cycle’ which consists of a condenser, evaporator, compressor, and expansion valve along with some tubing and a refrigerant. The cycle is compressor -> evaporator -> expansion valve -> condenser and then the cycle repeats. The refrigerant absorbs heat in the evaporator and rejects it through the condenser.

Correct, and that's more detailed than I'd even expect. I'd be satisfied with "I think it has something to do with the rule we learn in physics or chemistry about gasses warming up and cooling down when compressed and decompressed. So a gas gets squeezed, cooled down, and let out and it's even cooler then".

Sometimes I wonder how much more interesting school would be if it just explained how everything works instead of random concepts no one remembers apparently long enough to tie to objects in their life.

some of us have other things to do

Obviously we have infinite things to do. But we also waste a shocking about of time on random leisure and braindead nonsense. The interesting part to me is that we obviously do 'must do' and 'should do' and even 'want to do' things before we utterly waste time.

I'm just shocked that "learn how this important object in my home works" is not somewhere on either of those 3 lists.

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