where does the power in batteries come from?

Answer 1

Clearly not an easy question. There are two sorts of batteries: one is re-chargeable, the other is not.

Any battery consists of an electrically-conductive liquid (called an electrolyte) plus two 'plates.' These plates are just pieces of different electrically-conductive solids, usually metals but not always. For example, you might have a battery made of a piece of zinc and a piece of carbon hanging in a jar of salt water. Or a piece of nickel and a piece of iron hanging in a jar of Drano mixed with water (this is called an Edison cell.) _Any_ two different conductors hanging in a jar of _any_ electrolyte will give you a battery, but some combinations are lots better than others.

Where's the liquid in your cell phone battery, you ask. It's soaked up into a bit of cardboard, and this wet cardboard is placed between the plates. There's a wet powder inside the AA battery in your flashlight. But there's (almost) always something wet inside batteries.

As to the power: After you've used the carbon-zinc battery for a while, you'll find that the zinc has become all corroded, partially turned into zinc chloride or some other compound. To reverse this, you'd have to take the zinc chloride and heat it until you got zinc metal again, make a plate out of it, and put it back into your battery. Note that we need to add heat, and that's where the energy for our battery comes from:

When we buy a carbon-zinc battery, the metal in it was made from zinc ore, which the zinc mine people had to heat up in order to get metallic zinc. When we use the battery, we turn the zinc metal back into something a lot like zinc ore once again. And so the energy for a carbon-zinc battery comes from the zinc factory.

In some kinds of batteries, we don't have to heat up the metal of the deteriorated plate to restore it back to its original state. All we have to do is to push electric current back through it, and the chemical reaction witl turn the crud on the plate back to its original form.

For example, in a car battery (_all_ car batteries, not just 'old' ones, by the way) we have a plate made of lead and another made of lead peroxide. These hang in a jar of sulfuric acid. After we've used the battery by starting our car a few times, the lead peroxide turns into lead, rendering the battery dead. But if we allow the alternator of the car to push current back through the battery, it'll turn the lead on our used-up plate back into lead peroxide. This requires energy--it comes from the gasoline burned in the engine--to do.

The chemistry is more complicated than this, but that's one thing that happens. Several different reactions take place in any battery, and these can produce new chemicals which will eventually contaminate the battery. Thus even re-chargeable batteries will eventually have to be replaced.

Answer 2

A battery is a little box or can with two chemicals in it. The two chemicals are separated by a wall inside the battery.

The power comes from two chemicals. One positive and one negative. The chemicals will try to react in such a way as to balance thier charges, there by becoming neutral, with no charge.

So if you put a separator (electrolyte) between the chemicals, then they can only react if you put a conductor (wire or something that runs on electricity) between the negative and positive regions, the electrons will flow across the conductor from the negative side to the positive side so that the two opposing charges can neutralize each other. Like charges repel each other, and opposite charges attract each other.

Once both chemicals are neutalized, the battery is dead. You can then pump in new electrons to reverse the reaction to recharge the battery.

The traveling electrons are the electricity. Think of them like water. If you have a strong stream of water, you can use it to do work like, push a wheel around. Except that you would use the negative charge of the electron flow to repel the negative pole (S) of magnets in the shape of a wheel. That's how electric motors work.

Voltage is the measure of how great the difference between the + and - charge is. If one chemical is a only a little + and the other is only a little - , then it is low voltage (think water hose). If one chem is a lot + and the other is a lot - , then it's higher voltage (think Fire Hose). The greater the difference in charge (Volts), the more work it can do.

This is a simplified version of how it works but it should help you get a grasp on it.

Answer 3

Electrical storage batteries derive their electrical power from the chemical action between the poles of the battery (known as the electrodes) and the chemical substance inbetween the electrodes (known as the electrolyte). In the old car batteries, for example, lead rods or plates are the electrodes, whilst dilute sulphuric acid (H2SO4) is the electrolyte. The H2SO4 acid is split into hydrogen ions 2H+ and sulphate ions (SO4)--, with the hydrogen ions moving to one electrode which is said to be of negative potential, whilst the sulphate ions move to the electrode which is of positive potential. This movement of ions within the battery is basically that of electric charge and that is what provides the voltage as well as the current of such batteries.

Answer 4

It is a carry-over from the forces released by the big bang. Just as we can convert food to amongst other things, electrical signals that keep your brain sparking, on a more mundane level chemical properties enable the charge to be released in a controlled matter.
Unfortunately many of these helpful chemicals are toxic and some have been lost to the environment as pollution...

Answer 5

All batteries have a differential in potential (voltage) between the extremities that is generated by a chemical redox reaction.

Some of this reactions are reversible, if you apply a current, the reaction goes backward and the battery is recharged.

reversible batteries: lead, nickel-cadmium, lithium, magnesium (not commercial)
not reversible batteries: Zn-carbon, alkaline batteries (a whole family)

Answer 6

Alternator gets power from the engine which charges up the battery. If the three phase alternator didn't get AC power from your engine and rectify it to DC through seperate diodes 120 degrees out of phase from one another then your battery would be of no use.
Batteries also have chemicals and form a chemical reaction as the other person pointed out but they will not function without the alternator.

I answered this one from grey matter unlike the others who cheated on the web.

Love 2 U....

Answer 7

When two dissimilar metals are placed apart in an acid solution the acid affects them differently causing ions and electrons to travel within the liquid and through an external circuit. A batter is actually a collection of cells (like a battery of canons).

Answer 8

Chemistry is the driving force behind the magics of batteries.
A battery is a package of one or more galvanic cells used for the production and storage of electric energy by chemical means. A galvanic cell consists of at least two half cells, a reduction cell and an oxidation cell. Chemical reactions in the two half cells provide the energy for the galvanic cell operations.
Each half cell consists of an electrode and an electrolyte solution. Usually the solution contains ions derived from the electrode by oxidation or reduction reaction.
A galvanic cell is also called a voltaic cell. The spontaneous reactions in it provide the electric energy or current.
Two half cells can be put together to form an electrolytic cell, which is used for electrolysis. In this case, electric energy is used to force nonsponaneous chemical reactions.

Answer 9

Chemical energy is converted into electrical energy when a circuit is connected across the poles of the battery.

Answer 10

It looks such as you burned a fusible link. There are 2 or 3 of them hooked to the vast terminal of the starter. they seem to be wires yet, they are designed to burn if amperage attracts get to extreme. look on the wires on your starter. If one among them is bubbly/burnt looking or is stretchy once you tug on it, it incredibly is burnt. to repair it, disconnect the battery then take the vast nut off of the starter solenoid. Take the blistered fuse link and cut back it off at the back of the collar (a around plastic area on the cord). pass to the factors shop and get a clean one. i prefer to advise soldering the recent one on and overlaying it with warmth decrease tubing yet, you should purely use a butt connector and cover that with warmth decrease tubing. Tip: Take the old fuse link with you when you consider which you're able to be able to ought to tournament the cord length and the 'ring' connector.