Easy physics question

[Klompy]

If puting water bottles in the freezer saves energy, wouldn't it be better just to put an empty cardboard box that is taped up in instead? It wouldn't take nearly as much energy to cool down, and it would take up more area so that not as much air warms up each time you open the freezer.

I could be way off on this, but to be honest I really dont see an advantage to doing either. The way I see it the amount of heat that actualy gets into the freezer is going to be pretty close no matter what you have sitting in it.

If i'm wrong on this though, i'll accept it.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

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The water is still better than air even if the door stays shut.

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even w/ no leaks?

explain plz;thx

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Nah, that's boring. But check this [censored] out - hot water freezes faster than cold water! WTFLOLZMpembaEffectLMFAOROLZORZ!!!

[gumpzilla]

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The water is still better than air even if the door stays shut.

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even w/ no leaks?

explain plz;thx

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Yeah, it's not obvious to me either. I'm guessing leaks would probably be the big factor.

The other possibility is that for equal amounts of heat input, the temperature changes more for the air (because the specific heat is lower) and the efficiency of refrigeration cycles is based on the temperatures of the reservoirs (Wikipedia Carnot cycle if you want to read a little bit about this, although your refrigerator is not running a Carnot cycle.) So bigger temperature fluctuations means you'll be working in the inefficient regime more often.