This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,742 for Tuesday the 6th of December 2022.
Today's show is entitled Battery.
It is part of the series Ham Radio.
It is hosted by Ken Fallen and is about 10 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
The Wikipedia article on the battery.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallen and you are listening to another episode of Hacker Public
Radio.
Today, I'm going to do a show about batteries.
This is part of the amateur radio series where it's important for you to know what a battery
is. It's been read word forward from the Wikipedia simple English page and links will
be in the show notes.
A battery converts chemical energy into electrical energy by a chemical reaction.
Usually the chemicals are kept inside the battery.
It is used in a circuit to power other components.
A battery produces direct current electricity and that is electricity the flows of one
direction and does not switch back and forth.
Using the electricity from a loudness in a building is cheaper and more efficient.
But a battery can provide electricity in areas that do not have electrical power distribution.
It's also useful for things that move such as electric vehicles and mobile phones.
Batches may be primary or secondary.
The primary is thrown away when it can no longer provide electricity.
The secondary can be recharged and reused.
The electrical symbol of a battery is a horizontal line with a vertical line, then a space
and a small vertical line with a horizontal line extending out.
With the symbol plus on the long side and a minus on the short side.
So think of having two capital letter T's, put horizontal, almost touching and that's what
you have.
Next section, chemistry inside the battery.
A battery can be one cell or many cells.
Each cell has an anode, cathode and electrolyte.
The electrolyte is the main material inside the battery.
This is often a type of acid and can be dangerous to touch.
Anodes react with the electrolyte and produce electrons.
This is the negative or the minus end.
The cathode reacts with the electrolyte and takes electrons.
This is the positive or plus end.
The electric current happens when a wire connects the anode to the cathode and the electrons
move from one end to the other.
But a battery can be damaged by just a wire connecting the two ends.
As a load is also needed between the two ends.
The load is something that slows the electrons down and usually does something useful, like
a light bulb in a flashlight or the electronics in a calculator.
Electrolyte can be liquid or solid.
A battery is called a wet cell or dry cell depending on the type of electrolyte.
The chemical reactions that occur in a battery are exothermic reactions.
This type of reaction makes heat.
For example, if you leave your laptop on for a long time and then touch the battery, it
will be warm or hot.
A rechargeable battery is recharged by reversing the electric chemical reaction that occurs
within the battery.
But a rechargeable battery can only be recharged a given number of times.
That's called the recharge life.
Even built in batteries cannot be recharged forever.
Moreover, each time a battery is charged, it's ability to hold charge goes down a bit.
Unrechargeable batteries should not be charged as various harmful substances can leak out
such as pipe potassium hydroxide.
The cells can be connected to make a bigger battery, connecting the positive of one cell
to the negative of the next is called connecting them in series.
The voltage of each battery is added together.
Two six volt batteries connected in series will make 12 volts.
Connecting the positive of one cell to the positive of the other and the negative to the
negative of the other is called connecting them in parallel.
The voltage stays the same, but the current is added together.
The voltage is the pressure pushing the electrons through the wires and it is measured
in units called volts.
Current is how many electrons can go at once and it's measured in units called amps.
The combination of current and voltage gives the power and that's measured in watts.
So you can see what is equal to number of volts multiplied by the number of amps of a battery.
And there's a schematic shown batteries connected in parallel with a drawing.
Batteries come in different ships, sizes and voltages.
Similarly, triple A, C and D cells, including alkaline batteries, are standard sizes and shapes
and have about 1.2 volts.
The voltage of the cell depends on the chemicals used.
The electrical charge, it can supply depends on how large the cell is, as well as what chemicals
are used.
The charge of a battery delivers is usually measured in amp hours.
Since the voltage stays the same, many more charge means a bigger cell can supply more amps
or run for a longer time.
History
The first battery was invented in 1800 by Alexander Volta.
Nowadays his battery is called the Voltaic pile.
In small modern batteries, the fluid is immobilized in the kind of paste and everything
is put in a sealed case because of this case nothing can spill out of the battery.
Larger batteries, such as car batteries, still have liquid inside and are not sealed.
A kind of battery that uses molten salts, as the electrolyte was invented during war
war 2.
Type subatrices
Dry cells
Cells that do not contain a liquid or contain an immobilized liquid such as a paste or gel
as the electrolyte.
So there are two sections, first of them is primary cell.
These cannot be recharged.
Alkaline batteries called alkaline, not rechargeable, mercury batteries are also not rechargeable.
The clunge batteries are super heavy duty batteries, not rechargeable, lithium batteries,
sometimes called coin cell are not rechargeable, silver oxide batteries are not rechargeable
and these are called watch batteries and a Voltaic pile is also not rechargeable.
Cells can be recharged, these include sealed led acid batteries, lithium ion batteries,
used in cell phones and laptops, nickel cadium batteries, niCD are rechargeable, nickel metal
hydride batteries, niMH rechargeable and nickel zinc batteries are also rechargeable.
In the section wet cells, we have lead acid rechargeable car batteries, nickel iron rechargeable
Edison batteries and then we also have fuel cells which are recharged by adding fuel.
Alternative to batteries
Fuel cells and solar cells are not batteries because they do not store energy inside
them.
A capacitor is also not a battery because it does not store energy in a chemical form.
A capacitor can store electricity and create electricity much faster than a battery, but
is usually caused too much to make, it as big as a battery can be.
Scientists and chemical engineers are working to make better capacitors and batteries
for electrical cars.
All electrical generators operated by hand-in-foot can supply power in smaller electrical
devices.
Clockwork radios, clockwork toaches and similar devices also have a wind-up spring
to store mechanical energy.
References are included in the shown-offs.
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