Notes

Future Fridge Magnets
Fridge Magnets are a popular souvenir, often found in traveler's homes or on the kitchen walls of travelers. They're inexpensive, colorful and easy to carry - perfect for a little reminder of a holiday or vacation.

When I first started traveling, I couldn't find any fridge magnets with the countries I had visited on them - until I went to China and came across a factory that made them. I was surprised by how many magnets they had: a Finland magnet; a Germany magnet with lederhosen on it; an Austrian edelweiss magnet and a Dubai magnet emblazoned with "I'm from Dubai."

The factory makes everything from hats to keychains to trinkets, but its refrigerator-door magnets have become one of its most popular products. I've been lucky enough to win some of these on my trips to Asia, but a few years ago I decided to buy my own, which is engraved with the names of places I've lived or traveled.

This way, I can remember where I left my house or where I'm going without swiping a paper or pulling out a piece of tissue paper to write it down. The other thing is, it's a really cool piece of decoration and a fun conversation piece.

It's a little odd to think about, but these refrigerator magnets are actually made with a special kind of magnetic material. The idea is that if you place them on the inside of your fridge, they'll attract each other and cause the refrigerator's coolant to move around, lowering its temperature just slightly.

Now, GE engineers have taken that concept even further and made a magnetocaloric fridge that can drop temperatures by up to 57C (100F), but it's still just a prototype, so they can't say how efficient it is at the moment. But eventually, they hope the technology will be so good that it can make fridges 20-30% more efficient than current vapor-compression refrigeration systems.

That's a big deal, because it means that we won't need to use expensive cryogenic liquids like helium-3 to keep our food and drinks cold. It's already very expensive to produce helium-3 on Earth, so any new technologies that help us store our food in space-like conditions could save billions of dollars a year in energy costs.

If that's not good news, there's more bad news: The rare-earth minerals that are used to make these magnets are a critical part of GE's supply chain, and their prices will only continue to go up as they dwindle. That's why GE is investing heavily in developing this technology, so that they can get it to market before the price of helium-3 goes up too high for their customers.

In futuremerch when the world's economy is suffering and prices of essential goods are going up, it's important to focus on finding alternative solutions. And this is where magnetic cooling comes in: It's a way to get our fridges to colder temperatures without using helium or other expensive materials, while at the same time saving billions of dollars in energy costs for the world's largest manufacturers.
Website: https://www.futuremerch.store/