{"product_id":"9781472911421","title":"Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again","description":"The refrigerator. This white box that sits in the kitchen may seem  mundane nowadays, but it is one of the wonders of 20th century science –  life-saver, food-preserver and social liberator, while the science of  refrigeration is crucial, not just in transporting food around the globe  but in a host of branches on the scientific tree. Refrigerators,  refrigeration and its discovery and applications provides the remarkable  and eye-opening backdrop to \u003ci\u003eChilled\u003c\/i\u003e, the story of  how science  managed to rewrite the rules of food, and how the technology whirring  behind every refrigerator is at play, unseen, in a  surprisingly broad  sweep of modern life.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003ePart historical narrative, part scientific  mystery-lifter, \u003ci\u003eChilled\u003c\/i\u003e looks at the ice-pits of Persia  (Iranians still call their fridge the  'ice-pit'), reports on a tug of  war between 16 horses and the  atmosphere, bears witness to ice harvests  on the Regents Canal, and shows how bleeding sailors demonstrated to  ship's doctors that heat is  indestructible, featuring a cast of  characters such as the Ice King of Boston, Galileo, Francis Bacon, and  the ostracised son of a notorious 18th-century French traitor. As people  learned more about what cold actually was, scientists invented machines  for making  it, with these first used in earnest to chill Australian  lager. The  principles behind those white boxes in the kitchen remain  the same today, but refrigeration is not all about food – for example, a   refrigerator is needed to make soap, penicillin or orange squash;   without it, IVF would be impossible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRefrigeration technology  has also been crucial in some of the most important scientific   breakthroughs of the last 100 years, from the discovery of   superconductors to the search for the Higgs boson. And the fridge will  still be pulling the strings behind the scenes as teleporters and  intelligent computer brains turn our science-fiction vision of the   future into fact.","brand":"Bloomsbury USA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47129649545456,"sku":"9781472911421","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781472911421_p0.jpg?v=1763599247","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781472911421","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}