When opening a bottle of coke I noticed that the side steamed up. After thinking for a while, I came up with the refrigerator principle: gas that expands draws energy from the environment, causing the temperature to drop immediately. Isn’t it possible to further develop this principle, where you open a bottle of soft drink at room temperature, but the drink is still a lot cooler when you drink it?
Answer
In principle this is possible. This is the explanation why an aerosol hairspray feels cold when you let it spray for a few seconds.
But remember that the cool gas has a low heat capacity and you expect it to cool down a lot of liquid with a high heat capacity. So you will have to let a lot of gas expand to cool your cola. This is solved in a refrigerator by making it a cyclic process.
Answered by
Professor Walter Lauriks
Physics Acoustics
Old Market 13 3000 Leuven
https://www.kuleuven.be/
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