Question

11.34 While keeping your food cold, your refrigerator transfers energy from the inside to the surroundings. thus thermal energy goes from a colder object to a warmer one. What can you say about this? A. It is in violation of the second law of thermodynamics

B. It is not a violation of the second law of thermodynamics because refrigerators can have efficiency of 100%. C. It is not a violation of the second law of thermodynamics because of the the second law does not apply to refrigerators.
D. The second law of thermo dynamics applies in this situation, but it is not violated because the energy did not spontaneously go from cold to hot.

Answer 1

A refrigerator transferring energy from a colder interior to a warmer exterior is not a violation of the second law of thermodynamics because it involves work done by a compressor; thus, while the interior's entropy decreases, the total entropy increases.

Step-by-step explanation:

The process inside a refrigerator transferring energy from the cool interior to the warmer surroundings is not a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. The refrigerator uses work to transfer thermal energy in this way, which is an application of the concept that while heat does not spontaneously move from colder to hotter objects, it can do so when work is applied to the system.

In refrigerators and freezers, refrigerant absorbs heat from the interior space, making it cooler, and then an external compressor does work on the refrigerant to release the absorbed heat into the environment. While the entropy of the refrigerator's interior decreases, the entropy of the surrounding environment increases by a larger amount, thus, the sum total of entropy in the universe increases, aligning with the second law of thermodynamics.

Therefore, the correct statement about this heat transfer process in a refrigerator is: D. The second law of thermodynamics applies in this situation, but it is not violated because the energy did not spontaneously go from cold to hot.