The purpose of this exercise was to better understand the temperature profile of our refrigerators, especially the difference between an estimated and a measured temperature.

Hypothesis
My refrigerator is near an east facing window with no shades and is adjacent south-facing window with adjustable blinds drawn. I hypothesized that the morning sun that hits the refrigerator from around 7am to around 10:30 am in addition with higher ambient temperatures later, contributes to the internal temperatures rising in the afternoon and evening. My original estimate was intended more as a trend line; I did not consider the mechanical cycling of the system at first.

Methods
I placed the HOBO in the center of the refrigerator, making sure that it was not touching anything besides the metal shelf it sat on. The refrigerator has few food items, so it’s not as thermally massive as it would be if it were full. Also, I have not been cooking very much lately, so it’s unlikely that there has been any thermally significant opening and closing of the door.

In plotting the data, I removed the rows leading up to each 12am bracket. I left one reading before and one after in order to minimize the effect on the trend line.

Data Presentation
The temperature peak occurred around 6pm, which is later than I estimated (around 2pm).

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Assignments, Refrigerator Data. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.