• Question: how does a battery work

    Asked by anon-267491 to Adrien on 5 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Adrien Chauvet

      Adrien Chauvet answered on 5 Nov 2020:

      Hi,
      I like to picture batteries like a tank filled with water; water being the electricity. You can fill it up (=charge it); empty it by drilling holes (=connecting wires); you can empty it at different rate, depending on how much water you use (=plugging stuff that consumes more or less energy); etc.

      But from a physical point of view…
      what you get out of a battery are electrons. These electrons are stored initially in molecules. You can imagine that the battery has two sides: One is filled with molecules that have lots of electrons to give up. The other side is filled with molecules that are lacking electrons. When you connect the two sides (with a wire), electrons automatically flows from one side to the other.
      If you take a AAA battery, and use aluminium foil to connect the two sides, you will feel the aluminium warming up as the electrons flow through it!
      (and empty your battery in less time that you need to read all this).
      🙂

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