Question

Donny Dont's house only has one electric space heater, and on January 30th, it broke. His idea to make his house warmer is to turn down the temperature setting for the inside of his refrigerator from 45 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit, so that it will run more. So long as he doesn't open it, is this a good idea?

Group of answer choices

No. Don't do what Donny Dont does. He will just make his whole house colder because heat will transfer into the refrigerator.

Yes, do what Donny Dont does. The inside of the refrigerator will get colder, but the rest of the house will get warmer because there will be more heat energy released to the high temperature reservoir (your house) from the condenser coils.

No, but it would work to make the house warmer if he switched the coils of the refrigerator so that the condenser coils were on the inside with the food and the cooling/expansion coils were on the outside.

It is impossible to tell.

Answer 1

The principle on which the refrigerator works is that the compressor inside the fridge compresses the air which cools the air thus taking the heat from inside of the fridge and then expelling that heat to the surroundings by coils present at the back of the fridge. Now when he decreases the temperature of the fridge, the compressor works more thus expelling more heat to the surrounding which will increase the temperature but will decrease the compressor efficiency.

So yes you can increase the room temperature by decreasing fridge's temperature.