Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Fridge made entirely of glass

for high visibility
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So that we can know whats inside without opening the fridge.
VJW, Jun 21 2011

Aerogel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Jun 22 2011]

[link]






       No more dead bodies in the fridge.!
VJW, Jun 21 2011
  

       Transparent doors on refrigerators are certainly Baked; bottle fridges in bars are commonplace. Those doors are of plastic rather than glass, though.   

       Using triple glazing, coated glass and argon filling, it might be possible to engineer a wall structure with a k value close to that of the foams currently used; but it would be a lot more expensive, and very heavy.
8th of 7, Jun 21 2011
  

       My guess is that, if such a fridge will sell like hot cakes. People don't care much about insulation/efficiency; They care about looks.
VJW, Jun 21 2011
  

       But it would look horrible - all you'd see is a massive, random pile of chilled food, plastic containers, old vegetables, pools of water and half-empty packets of cheese. Whereas when I look at my fridge I see a flawless, gleaming, 2-metre-high piece of brushed stainless steel.
hippo, Jun 21 2011
  

       hmm... let's see what condiments I will use today..
FlyingToaster, Jun 21 2011
  

       Rats! Now I have to find another place to store my collection of severed heads. Bun anyway [+].
Grogster, Jun 21 2011
  

       Even though the thought of a beautiful glass fridge seems nice at first, [hippo] is so right about what it really would look like! Besides it would be dark in there unless one had a light that stayed on when the door was closed!
xandram, Jun 21 2011
  

       We've been here before. I remember curiosity about why i looked at glass fridges all day on this very website.   

       It would require the interior to be kept very neat but that wouldn't be a bad thing in itself. Actually, something occurs to me about this: a fridge made with the wrong kind of glass would be poorly insulated but a CCTV fridge with screens on all external surfaces would be - huh? I can't get my head together about what the difference would be.
nineteenthly, Jun 21 2011
  

       well, now one can figure out if food has gone bad ( ex. caught fungus) easily. He/she does not have to keep checking it explicitly.
VJW, Jun 21 2011
  

       //People don't care much about insulation/efficiency; They care about looks.//   

       In such a world, I would store my raw meat inside a supermodel.
daseva, Jun 21 2011
  

       CCTV wouldn't have that 3D parallaxability thing going on. (my new word)
RayfordSteele, Jun 21 2011
  

       So [VJW] - how exactly does it help you figure out if your food has gone bad? Like I said, it's dark in there and if your food is in a container, what is the difference?
xandram, Jun 21 2011
  

       //if your food is in a container//   

       Make it transperent plastic container. Yeah, that should do the trick.
VJW, Jun 21 2011
  

       [bigsleep] <applause!>
hippo, Jun 21 2011
  

       But, none of thoese fridges are entirely made up of glass.. This will make a significant difference in perception of the product.
VJW, Jun 21 2011
  

       I wonder exactly how well hotcakes sell anymore? You don't exactly see new IHOPs being built. Methinks we need a new similie. Like iphone apps, Google stock, or credit default swaps.
RayfordSteele, Jun 21 2011
  

       what [hippo] said   

       should that be - losing my mind not hind!
po, Jun 21 2011
  

       I assumed //hind// was some kind of obscure reference to back bacon.
pocmloc, Jun 21 2011
  

       // But, none of thoese fridges are entirely made up of glass.. This will make a significant difference in perception of the product. //   

       How do you know it'll make a halfpennyworth of difference?   

       And how do you propose to overcome the problems that have kept anyone else from making an entirely-glass fridge?   

       You've got a WIBNI that only you think would be nice, that's pretty much already made, that's pretty obvious, that must be difficult to make completely out of glass, and no method of making it.   

       Here's what I want something like: "Place a giant glass cylinder over a cylindrical set of shelves, with a hoisting mechanism to lift the glass when access is desired. Put the cold air input on the hoist line so cold air is entering at the top."   

       See, that has at least a nod toward a method. Otherwise, you are just wishing for a glass fridge.   

       I am finally fishboning. [-]
baconbrain, Jun 21 2011
  

       This is quite possible, if the insulation used is "aerogel". Which happens to be the best physical-substance insulator around, and can even be fairly transparent. Not to mention that aerogel is also mostly silicon dioxide, the same as glass. The main drawback is that so far aerogel is hideously expensive.
Vernon, Jun 22 2011
  

       And unreasonably fragile.
RayfordSteele, Jun 22 2011
  

       And aerogel sucks up liquids like crazy.
baconbrain, Jun 22 2011
  

       What would insulate better, vacuum or dry Argon ?
8th of 7, Jun 22 2011
  

       /In such a world, I would store my raw meat inside a supermodel./   

       I volunteer for the beta testing of such a world.
bungston, Jun 22 2011
  

       I thought the point of this was to finally answer the question about what happens to the light when you shut the door...
gtoal, Jun 22 2011
  

       [8th of 7], the problem with vacuum is that the area of glass, with vacuum on one side, and air pressure on the other, would not be strong enough, unless the glass was super-thick/heavy. And argon can do "convection" heat-transfer in-between glass panes, unless there are lots of separators between the panes to interfere with the motion of the gas. But then the separators can simply physically conduct heat between the panes....   

       [RayfordSteele] and [baconbrain], neither of your objections to aerogel should be a problem if it is sealed inside glass panes. Of course I admit the entire fridge could still be fragile, but that's not really the issue here. People have been dealing with large glass panes for a long time, and mostly know to be more careful around them than when elswhere.
Vernon, Jun 22 2011
  

       You could use a vacuum, at least if the glass were reasonably thick and the areas were not too vast. The loading is about one ton per square foot, and there are glass floor-panels which can handle loads of this order easily. For larger areas, you would need either very thick glass or (much better) short stubby spacers to take the load. The spacers compromise insulation, but you'd still have way, way better insulation than a regular fridge has.   

       The main reason that vacuum-panels aren't used is that it's not easy to make them completely leak- proof cheaply, and there's no real point in having that level of thermal insulation in a fridge. Opening the door once will waste way more heat.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 22 2011
  

       Incidentally, the Dutch architect Konrad Hoogenvelt died trying to use "vacuum glass" in 1983. He was more a designer than an engineer, and designed and built a house which was transparent and almost perfectly (he argued) isolated from the outside world. He said it was meant to expose the occupants whilst insulating them, or some such tombollockry.   

       Most of the structure was built from glass slabs which were about 3ft square and contained a vacuum in the middle (they were made as single pieces, like a flat thick-walled vacuum tube).   

       It was probably all just about OK, except that the panels were bonded to eachother with a very rigid polycarbonate resin.   

       The presumption (after the accident) was that one panel had failed or been damaged and, on imploding, the stresses had triggered the collapse of adjacent panels, and so on in a catastrophic chain reaction which was reported as sounding "like a bomb blast". The end result was that most of the building was basically reduced to powder, along with its sole occupant (well, he was more of a mush than a powder). The site was closed off for more than six months while people argued over how to clear the debris, since the surviving panels could have shattered and imploded at any time; eventually they "defused" the remains using a steamroller with a cab protected by bullet-proof polycarbonate.   

       So maybe vacuum-panelled fridges are not such a great idea.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 22 2011
  

       isn't the bigger problem spoilage and/or heating from all the incoming light?
tjhenry, Jun 23 2011
  

       Heavy velvet drapes around the outside?
pocmloc, Jun 23 2011
  

       //Incidentally, the Dutch architect Konrad Hoogenvelt...// *citation needed
hippo, Jun 23 2011
  

       Would it be completely outside the realms of sensibility to make a glass fridge containing a large block of very clear ice, with a vacuum inside it, accessible via an airlock?
nineteenthly, Jun 23 2011
  

       // *citation needed// I don't think Hoogenvelt was in any state to receive one.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 23 2011
  

       [ ] the idea sucks except as a bar-fridge ("ice cube"), but I like [bigsleep]'s song.
FlyingToaster, Jun 23 2011
  

       Darnit, [MaxB], I Googled "Konrad Hoogenvelt". Most amusing.
baconbrain, Jun 23 2011
  
      
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