Barocal can cool your food and drink by squeezing a hunk of plastic crystals

Refrigerators today run on the same basic technology as they did more than 100 years ago. You’d think we could have come up with something better by now. And we have, but nothing has been able to dethrone cheap, reliable vapor compression — the process that’s keeping your milk cold today. One startup hopes to change that. Barocal has developed an entirely new way of heating and cooling using nothing but an inexpensive solid material. …