Talk:Electric battery/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Not sure how to edit this template to show what I've done! Astaroth5 22:16, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Add done to the item, after press the link : Add done to the item, after pressing edit in /to_do.

About the first picture...

I like the picture, but the text beneath it does not make sense some of the time, like when it says "triple AAA". I would like to change it to "two "AAA" (batteries)". How do you do it?

--Airplaneman (talk) 14:44, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Advertising

http://www.voltmanbatteries.com needs to stop advertising on the battery rebuild section. thank you, GMoonit (talk) 23:29, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Environmental considerations

This section sure could use more information. The NiCad article too. I'd write it but I don't know anything about it and need some information right now (I have six 80 lb NiCad batteries left by a neighbor that died and no one will take them  :-( ). 71.226.121.41 21:36, 3 January 2006 (UTC) JCP

Actually, a cell is a single "Battery" like an AA, but a Baterry is just a plural word for cell i.e. a battery is made up from lots od cells. I don't think this is made clear in the article.

Cell vs. Battery

Why not have some chemical equations? There is an equivalent circuit of a battery here, but not much information on how electrochemical cells actually work. Does anyone who contributes to wikipedia know any chemistry?

Can the battery versus cell distinction be based on the fact that the cell voltage is fixed by electrochemistry while battery voltage can be any sum of cell voltages?

Batteries in antiquity

Hmm.. perhaps some more info on real batteries maybe? I dislike how you use the word battery vs. cell. Now that I'm thinking once more, I would like to see information about depolarizers on here, there is no article for it. You have jack information about that. Info on how hydrogen bubbles ruin batteries/cells through polarization during the discharge of a cell would help.--Cyberman 01:23, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Did they really use it for electric power (which to me implies an understanding of electric power to some degree), or did they use it for the side effects of electric power (which implies no understanding of electric power)? I think it is the latter. - UtherSRG 15:56, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

"Did they really use it for electric power"? Yes they did ... to accomplish various activities ...

"implies an understanding of electric power to some degree"? yes they did ... not akin to modern understanding ... it was an understand to thier culture (and thier own particular association and terms [ie., different than ours today, most likely])...

"use it for the side effects of electric power"? they did ...

"implies no understanding of electric power"? They understood if they constructed the device ... it would have functioned as described ... explain it how you like, but it is a "understanding" of similar principles (just called another way) ...

the latter? I would go for the prior ...

Sincerely, JDR

Reddi, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; start showing any evidence for these claims. --Jerzy 22:59, 2004 Jan 22 (UTC)

"extraordinary claims"? What exact claim is sooo extraordinary? That ancient people had devices that emitted electrical power? ... see the Ark of the Covenant article [analysis section].

"evidence"? what evidence do you need? There is Baghdad Battery (main one), the Ark [see above], and a primative CRT [found on egyptian walls] . Others probably could be cited, but those are a few to start (and right off the top o' my head) ...

"claims"? These are not my claims ... but claims from other ppl ...

Sincerely, JDR

none of the evidence you've just mentioned here does not have an ounce of proof supporting it, Baghded battery--function not known or clear, primitive CRT---inscribings on a wall hmmmm thats proof, the ark------wow is all i have to say, all you have mentioned here is purely speculative with no proof backing it up at

Stubblefield

Removed for 2nd time, since every indication is that it is the height of insignificance:

In 1898, Nathan Stubblefield recieves receives approval of a battery patent (US600457; this electrolytic coil patent is referred to as an "earth battery").

--Jerzy(t) 08:49, 2004 Mar 5 (UTC)

I've put in it for the 3rd time. Of electrical batteries, it an earth battery. JDR

Added some info on its construction. There are several web sites which discuss it, showing that it is of greater general interest than some other 19th century batteries which did not achieve common use. I suggest that the interest in the Stubblefield earth cell justifies its inclusion in Wiki.Edison 14:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Eclectic Links

What is the point of that list of tenuous links at the end of this article? Game Boy, for instance? Does anybody think they are useful? -- Heron 14:58, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• If you're referring to Things and Other, no. They're useless, totally irrelevent and add to the clutter. There are probably too many links above those also, but at least they seem to have some relevence. While we're on the topic of links, I think that primary cells doesn't warrant a link its own (non-existent) page; it could be explained inline. RatOmeter

• It looks like someone took a copy of "What links here" and linked back to every single one. Here's a list of things which don't really have to do with batteries (apart from the fact that some of them use batteries, which isn't really noteworthy), and which we might be able safely discard. Any objections?

Electronics: Accumulator | Transducer | Transistor | Vacuum tube | Telephone switchboard | Diode | Diode bridge | Arc lamp | Flash | Flashlight | Light bulb | Light meter | Lighting | Magneto | Remote control | Fan | Superconductivity | Clockwork | Round-the-pole flying | Static Random Access Memory | Explosively pumped flux compression generator

Chemicals and elements: Adenosine triphosphate (at least...)

Automotive: Hybrid electric vehicle (redirects to Hybrid car) | IBM Convertible | Diesel cycle

Other: Viking program | BASF | Motorola | Operation Bojinka (??) | Philippine Airlines Flight 434 | Raytheon Corporation | Game Boy | Insulin pump | Naval mine | Steadicam | Cellophane (?????) | Mars Pathfinder | Segway HT

Starsong 19:49, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• I'm all for it. Let's cut the clutter. Consensus?

• OK, I cut out a lot of the junk, but there's still a lot of stuff left. I also made the formatting easier to read. People should feel free to cut more if they want. Starsong 01:33, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

A battery

Is there such a thing as an A battery? The article on A doesn't mention it. Should it be removed from the list? Rmhermen 00:42, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)

I found a reference to the A cell, with dimensions, but I don't know who makes it. I added it to the table. However, the list seems redundant anyway, because the types are listed in the table above it. -- Heron 08:58, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Awright. If we want to list every type, it can be done but we've missed a few. Example: F type is 4/3 of a D type (so I guess there is an E as well?). A B cell exists also, though I don't know the dimensions. There are many odd sizes which are incorporated into battery packs for all applications. Certainly there is a standard (ISO?) somewhere that specifies it. Shall we attempt to be thoroughly inclusive or list only the most commonly used (as individual cells) types? RatOmeter 03:12, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I say we list all of them, but mark them as "common" or "rare" etc, and say where they are used. Otherwise we will just invite arguments about which ones belong on the list. -- Heron 08:33, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

An "A" battery was used on battery powered vacuum tube radios from the 1920's onward. The "A" battery was typically a rechargeable lead acid battery or for portable sets a dry cell battery composed of several cells could be used. The current draw was usually over .5 ampere. It had to produce this fairly large current to power the tube filaments. Powering a tube radio from dry cells was very expensive due to their rapid exhaustion, even when hooked up in a series-parallel arrangement. The "B" battery was a low current, high voltage dry cell battery(one or more 45 volt batteries in series) used to power the plate circuit. A substitute today might be a number of 9 volt batteries in series. A "C" battery was a low voltage dry cell, 1.5 to 4.5 volts, used to provide grid bias for the circuit, and the terminology did not mean any equivalence with today's C cells. Today's equivalent might be 1 to 3 AA batteries in series. Except for rural users who had no electric utility and portable sets, the battery sets were largely obsolete by the late 1920's, when sets powered by 120 volt alternating current or direct current came along, eliminating the cost of buying batteries or paying to have the A battery recharged at a radio shop. Would a referenced historical section on these batteries be appropriate for inclusion?Edison 15:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, just found Wiki articles on "A" "B" and "C" batteries which provide a similar explanation to the above. It seems odd to have individual encyclopedia articles on each size of battery. Edison 18:40, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Those three articles have been merged to Battery (vacuum tube). Note that these articles refer to battery use rather than battery size. --PeterJeremy (talk) 11:18, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

"gravity cell"

Some researchers called the battery a gravity cell because gravity kept the two sulfates separated.

What sulfates? The context is missing, making this sentence rather unintelligible.

The cell (also called the Daniell cell) refered to here used copper sulfate and zinc sulfate on opposite sides of a porous membrain. The cell used copper and zinc electrodes each of which had to be in a solution of its own sulfate, or to keep the cell functioning. A diagram of a typical cell appears here:

• • The Telegraph Line: Batteries

-- 205.175.225.5 02:07, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Etymology

Our article claims:

[Benjamin Franklin]... adapted the word from its earlier sense meaning a beating, which is what an electric shock from the apparatus felt like.

Is there any evidence for this claim? My dictionary claims that by analogy with a battery of artillery, battery had come to mean a group of things joined together to give an enhanced effect; and that an electric battery is just such a battery of galvanic cells. Securiger 07:14, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

When Volta (from whose name the unit of measure volt) invented the battery, it was made of a raw of many diffferent disks (of two type, disposed alternatevely). The term battery (also in Italian and maybe in Latin) originally mean a group of similar thing that are kept together. I have found this meanig also in my little (modern) English dictionary. In my humbly opinion the link between battery and beat are quite not evident. In Italian the term 'batteria' nowdays means also a musical instrument: the drums (I mean the set of drums, cymbals and so on). Even if many persons not correctlly belive the term came from to beat (in Italian 'battere'), it cames from the fact that it a set of instrument. The name 'piles' comes from the Volta's bactery. It was a vertical coloum with many disk disposed in a pile. Often many batteries are used connected in series or paraller. Even if you see just one battery sometimes inside there are some battery connected among them. This is the case of the battery of 4.5 V (that by the way is not in the table) that is made by 3 real batteries of 1.5 V (but do not open it if do not know how to do it safely, be careful) AnyFile 11:26, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Volta invented the electrochemical battery in 1799, but Franklin invented the electrostatic battery before that. It was Franklin who first used the word battery in the electrical sense, referring to an array of eleven capacitors, in a letter to Peter Collinson of the Royal Society in London on the 29th of April 1749. (There is a transcript of the letter here). You are probably right that Franklin was using the word in the sense of "an array of objects", not as in "a beating", but he probably chose that word (instead of the more obvious alternatives such as "array" or "whole bunch") because of its association with violence. --Heron 14:58, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The OED also gives the derivation for "battery" in the electrical sense from its meaning of "a number of pieces of artillery placed in juxtaposition for combined action" as opposed to the whacking-about-the-body-with-a-stick meaning. Even if Franklin was influenced by the word's association with violence, it would seem the current etymology given in this article is incorrect. Any objections to changing it? Moosenose 05:57, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Power Paper

http://www.howstuffworks.com/power-paper.htm/printable may be a good resource. Brianjd 08:11, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)

Fuel cells

In science and technology, a battery is a device that stores energy and makes it available in an electrical form.

...batteries usually consist of electrochemical devices such as one or more galvanic cells or more recently fuel cells...

I don't think a fuel cell "stores" energy. Brianjd 08:16, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)

Batteries come with a store of chemical reactants built-in whereas in fuel cells, the reactants are supplied by and from mechanisms and storage tanks external to the cell (so they're something like a battery that is continuously being recharged by replacing the reactant chemicals as they are exhausted).

Atlant 16:31, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

In a broader sense batteries and fuel cells convert chemical energy to electrical energy. A flow battery also has (some or all) of its energy store outside of the converter/ reactor. Therefore, a fuel cell could be considered as a type of battery. Also metal-air batteries (also known as consumable anode fuel cells) take air as one of their reactive components - battery or not?

ahw001 12 Mar 2006

Why do they break down?

A friend of mine asked why batteries go bad -- you know, they just start pushing crap out their ends if they're not used for a while. Tried to find the info here, couldn't. Maybe someone should add it? Or am I just looking at the wrong article? Anyway, it should probably be pointed out better if it is in a different article. Cheers. CryptoDerk 17:33, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

That is an excellent question. I suspect that there are several different failure modes for batteries. Let me try adding my best guess to the article. Does anyone know any better? --DavidCary 05:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

The material is electrolyte paste and corroded metal. In the original carbon-zinc dry cell this happened very frequently becaused the "consumed" zinc electrode was the outer can of the cell and almost always developed holes through which electrolyte leaked just before it died. Modern batteries invert this construction, putting the "consumed" electrode on the inside and enclosing the cell in a steel jacket. However there are still a few small paths through which electrolyte can occasionally leak even in these cells (however it is usually limited to the ends by the steel jacket – the old cells could leak anywhere... wherever the zinc was eaten through first).

But as DavidCary stated, batteries have many failure modes, this leakage of electrolyte paste is only the external symptom of any of several internal failures. -- 205.175.225.5 02:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Yep, old batteries could broke of their own. Today, some batteries "become older" and don't give as much power than before. But the main origin of their poor lifetime is from the manufacturer. They install a small system which lets some of the respective electrodes slowly melt with the other one, definitly damaging the cell. Of course, they wouldn't want to sell batteries which can be used during 10 years ( if they can be charged ), they usually break down after one year ... So that you go to buy an other one ;-). So the battery can deplete even if it has never been used. This can't be much used in generic batteries, but in specific batteries, as in electronic products, you can find this system --Totophe64 18:26, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, batteries "self discharge" at predictable rates based on the chemistry used and the storage temperature.[1]. Nothing mysterious about this. --John Nagle 04:50, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Amps?

How many amperes are in AA, AAA, C and D batteries?

You need to ask a "more specific" question. :-)

What you're probably asking is "How many Ampere-Hours" in each size of battery. The answer to that varies depending on the exact battery technology and vendor, but roughly speaking, an AAA alkaline battery is about 800 mAH, an AA battery is about 2000 mAH, and a D cell is probably 8 or 10 AH. By comparison, in NiMH, an AA battery rated 1800 mAH is about as good as it gets today (2004).

You might also be asking the question "How much current can a battery comfortably deliver?". In this case, NiCd and NiMH batteries are probably the winner (which is why NiCd batteries are still used in portable tools). Again, for a specific answer, you'll need to specify which type of battery (Carbon/Zinc, Alkaline, NiCd, NiMH, Lithium, etc.)

Atlant 20:54, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Or in other words, "How much energy is stored in this battery?" and "How quickly can I get all that energy out?".

Disambiguation link

We probably don't need the link to the battery disambiguation page, though it isn't very intrusive and doesn't hurt to have it either.

Someone put it there in response to my request when I reverted someone else's deletion of a link to one other specific meaning. At the time, I was under the mistaken impression that this Battery (electricity) article remained the default article rather than the disambiguation page. But that isn't the case, and existing links appear to have been changed (except talk pages which we don't need to worry about), so most anyone who ends up at Battery (electricity) should be where they belong. But then, maybe the discussion here will lead someone to wonder about similar meanings, and the link to the disambiguation page would be helpful.

In summary, I don't really care whether it is kept or deleted, just pointing out in case someone else cares one way or another, so that they aren't misled by what I did in my edits. Gene Nygaard 16:38, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I put it there, and I recognized that it's not really needed. But on the other hand, it's not very harmful either, and you did seem to want it. :-) Feel free to delete it or leave it as you wish.

Atlant 19:18, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The business of batteries

The article currently contains the statement:

Businesswise, the battery industry is worth 2.8 billion dollars annually

Aside from the fact that we could write that better, and attribute the currency (which I assume is US$), does anyone have a citation to back up the basic fact being asserted here? And what portion of "the battery business" does this represent? Disposable primary cells? ALL batteries, whether primary and secondary? Radioisotope Thermal Generators? I think we need more details, otherwise, we should remove this.

Atlant 10:58, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Square prism

what's a square prism. it's an oxymoron. Is there any reason why we cant use cube instead? tommylommykins 16:05, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Nope, not an oxymoron. A prism is simply a multi-sided plane object projected into the third dimension, so there are equilateral prisms, isosceles prisms, square prisms, pentaprisms, and the like. And for some reason, the battery industry routinely uses the term "prismatic" to refer to cells that you or I might call boxes or right-angled Parallelepipeds. And cube, of course, would be wrong as not all sides of the batteries in question are equal.

Atlant 17:05, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Cuboid would be correct, but only mathematicians would understand it. --Heron 20:44, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

merge?

Should we merge Battery pack into the Battery (electricity) article ? Technically, a battery pack is a collection of individual cells, the very definition of a battery. (Although some battery packs have a thermistor or other stuff to help the battery charger). --DavidCary 13:24, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Merge. - Omegatron 13:28, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

I created Battery pack in the hope to flesh it out as an sub-section for Battery Electric vehicles similar to motors, controllers, regulators, battery management systems, chargers, etc. There are many unique issues which arrise when utilizing a battery in a vehicle for motive power. BEV Packs range from small 10Ah@24v(0.25kWh) to rather large 200Ah@300v(60kWh), will the unique aspects of such batteries fit within the scope of this article? Actually, technically speaking battery (electricity) would more appropriately be named Cell (electricity), a battery being a collection of cells manufactured into a single unit such as a 9v battery or 12v auto battery. So a Battery pack is a collection of multiple batteries, sometimes cells, but the majority are a collection of multiple PbA automotive 12v(6 cell) or 6v(3 cell) batteries. battery (electricity) should focus primarily on Cells, chemestries, characteristics and end with multi-cell batteries perhaps mentioning interconnect built into such products. A Battery pack is more of a specific application than the how and why of electro-chemecal cells. No Merge, link to from Application section --D0li0 18:01, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Don't merge. There is enough material that is significantly different. Rmhermen 18:06, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Don´t merge and create battery electric vehicle elements´articles (vehicle electric motor (improved from traction motor), motive battery... --HybridBoy 19:48, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean, these two elements of an EV are most commonly called a traction motor and a battery pack, please don't create a vehicle electric motor nor a motive battery article. --D0li0 04:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

energy cost of batteries

Some people claim that hybrid-electric vehicles and BEVs ultimately consume more fossil fuel than internal combustion engines. They claim that constructing the batteries themselves requires lots of grid electricity (and it occurs in countries where most electrical power comes from fossil fuels). This large amout of fossil fuel consumed is never quite paid back by the better efficiency of the electric vehicles in operation.

A very rough estimate is made by j.pickens. It seems to support such claims. Does anyone know a more accurate estimate?

The argument sounds very similar to the Talk:Solar cell and Net energy gain.

--DavidCary 05:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunently j.pickens has a few figures wrong, the $6000 Prius battery is more like $3000 MSRP plus $3000 core exchange, which might be where the $6K figure came from. In all reality the battery cost Toyota about $500 as the going high production volume rate is in the $500-$1000/kWh range for NiMH. Just for further referance Li-ion is at about $400/kWh. Now re-running his figures from the point of this error leaves us with 50% energy input or $250 worth of energy to create the battery pack. At $0.09/kWh we get 22.5kWh and not 33,000kWh to produce the battery, that's about the energy content of 1 gallon of gas vs 1000 gallons. Anyway, all of this is moot and I may have even misplaced a decimal. There really must be better referances out there. Can we get Sony or Panasonic to tell us what it actually costs them to run a factory for a year which produces X quantity of such and such battery? This would include to materials, labor, energy, etc, etc for a much clearer picture... --D0li0 13:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Another approach would be to estimate the dollar value of the motor fuel savings over the life of the Prius battery. Presumably the hybrid powerplant has to yield a net monetary savings to the consumer, or it would not make sense to buy. Suppose the battery lasts for six years and saves $1000 in fuel per year. Then it would just break even at a $6000 replacement cost if we ignore the time value of money. If the consumer just breaks even, there must be a net energy savings, because the savings is all energy (fuel) cost, whereas the battery cost includes other non-energy costs such as labor and so on to manufacture. The hybrid powerplant might provide other advantages, such as less vulnerability to temporary shortages of fuel. If terrorists blow up Saudi Arabia or there is some other fuel emergency and governments have to impose rationing, hybrid drivers will probably fare better than Hummer drivers. Even if the hybrid vehicle yields no net energy savings, it will already have been manufactured and thus is not as dependent on the momentary supply of fuel. Of course a bicycle is even less dependent on the momentary supply of fuel, and thus confers even more energy security. --Teratornis 20:49, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Cost of electricity from disposable batteries

The article mentions the high cost of energy from batteries but gives no details. I gave a rough estimate of the electricity cost from disposable batteries in #Questions from the article below. It would be interesting if someone could work out some more accurate examples and add them to the article proper. It would be interesting to calculate the cost, weight, and bulk of the disposable batteries necessary to meet the electricity needs of a typical modern residence. --Teratornis 20:49, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Flow Battery

i think an interesting thing to add would be the flow battery. i couldnt find it in wiki, but i think it is absolutely worth to add here. there is a link that explains to some extend the function and feasibility of a flow battery: http://www.memagazine.org/contents/current/features/rerere/rerere.html

I've just updated the entry on vanadium redox (flow) batteries, any objections if I link to it from this article? sections History, Summery(rechargable) and Chemicals used in constuction? Astaroth5 21:25 (UTC) 9th November 2005

Reorganization as per todo list

I've taken a shot at doing the reorganization mentioned, but this is my first attempt at a major edit of a popular article, so if I've screwed it up, I'm Sorry! I've not removed any material at all, just reorganized it and added a little on flow batteries. Praise, comment, criticism, correction, or even just plain reversion ( if I have seriously messed up ) are all welcome! Astaroth5 22:16, 14 November 2005 (UTC) -Nice work. Thanks for being bold. Cheers, -Willmcw 00:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Ideal battery and EMF

I think some explanation of an ideal battery should be on this page. I might add the model of a battery having an EMF and an internal resistance. Fresheneesz 02:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

The electrical component section already does mention that, although the term EMF isn't used. Astaroth5 09:03, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Article removed from Wikipedia:Good articles

This article was formerly listed as a good article, but was removed from the listing because unfortunately it has no references. Otherwise it's a great article, though I think the see also section is unnecessarily huge and most of the topics should be mentioned in the main text in any case, so there's no need to relink them. Worldtraveller 00:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Ozone batteries?

Out of curiousity, I googled for ozone batteries and I found the following: http://www.nuenergy.org/theory/ioncell.htm "The energy density of the aluminum/ozone cell is excellent, even better than the lithium cell. There are no side reactions that take place between the electrolyte and the aluminum..."

Can anyone verify or perhaps add to the current current article.

Thanks :)

I certainly wouldn't invest in this technology. This appears to be a fairly standard Al-air battery where they use ozone in place of air. This supposedly gives a slight increase in the cell voltage. Although it is clear where air comes from, how is the ozone produced? They mention using high voltages. This would entail an energy input to make the battery operate. So where does the initial energy come from? I wouldn't take this idea to seriously until they have published some peer-reviewed experimental results. Ahw001 06:47, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was don't move. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 07:56, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposed move

Battery (electricity) to Battery. This is by far the most common usage of the term, so it should be at simply Battery with a link at the top to Battery (disambiguation) with the other meanings. Booking563 00:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation and sign your vote with ~~~~

• Support per nom. David Kernow 16:17, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
• Mildly oppose -- Per the disambiguation page, there are plenty of alternate uses that are reasonably common. Atlant 17:20, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose WLD 17:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. While the most common, it is not common enough to say that by entering battery most articles or users would get to the correct page. Since a redirect should not normally place you at the wrong page, this suggested change is probably not a good change. In looking at the remaining links to the dab article, I'm not sure that all of the uses are included on the DAB page. Vegaswikian 19:38, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose A word such as battery which has a number of meanings only tenuously related is precisely the circumstance for which disambiguation pages exist. Every word that has a disambiguation page has a most common usage, but that does not remove the validity of such a page. An erroneous application of the word, no matter how common, should not displace accurate ones. Kevin McE 13:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
• OpposeI do not think that the use of "battery (electricity)" is so overwhelming that it should be moved to "battery". I have recently been working on the torture article and thinking of battery (crime). The advantage of keeping it as it is is that it is much easier to pick up disambiguation links that need to be assigned to a specific page. --Philip Baird Shearer 22:48, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, the military battery and the crime battery are quite common. 132.205.45.148 19:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Late votes

• Support few people would search for the other batteries without a qualifier of some sort, because of the dominance of the primary term.--Technicaltechy 21:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

high voltage capacitors just hanging there

Some text was recently added about high voltage capacitors that is not very informative. And it is not obvious what the substance of it is from going to the capacitors wikilink. I think there should be a more specific link or reference which fleshes this out.--Technicaltechy 12:17, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if this recent text is actually a mistake? I've read about supercapacitors being used as stand-ins for batteries (and some of them are "big" enough that they're rated in mAH: 3500 mAH!), but I haven't yet hear about any "ultra-high-voltage capacitors being used.

Then again, the Supercaps article contains this text:

As of spring 2006, EEStor Inc. claims to have a supercapacitor with a barium titanate dielectric nearing production. The company claims a unit with 37 farads capacitance and an operating voltage of 3.5 kV, capable of storing up to 52kWh. The technology is scheduled for third-party verification during the summer of 2006.

so maybe by supercap standards 3.5KV is "ultra-high voltage"? It's certainly about 1400 times more than your typical low-voltage supercap.

Perhaps the original editor will check-in and tell us what was really on their minds?

Atlant 19:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Questions from the article

68.169.187.216 asked in the article (now moved here):

NEED:

How much energy(Kilowatts)is required to manufacture various types of batteries?

What are the toxic materials?

What type of battery is the most/least environmental?

Atlant 23:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Rough answer: the energy cost to manufacture any product is unlikely to exceed the normal selling price to the consumer, assuming the vendor is trying to make a profit (this is just common sense). Because the retail price has to pay for other costs (materials, labor, amortization on equipment, taxes), the energy cost will generally be some fraction of the ordinary final selling price, perhaps in the range of 10%-25%. Even when products are discounted during clearance sales, they rarely get discounted below the net cost of the energy required to make them and get them to the consumer. Most of the energy will have been purchased at industrial rates, but these are probably similar to what the individual pays for electricity and fuel, because the energy market is efficient and highly commoditized. Thus if a disposable battery retails for, say, US$1, you can look at your electric bill and see how much electric energy you can purchase for US$0.25, and that's probably an upper bound on the energy consumed to make that product and present it for sale to you. Note that for a disposable battery, the cost of the electricity it yields is many times higher than what the local power company charges. Residential consumers might pay from US$0.05 to US$0.10 per kW·h. Suppose a disposable battery retails for US$1 and yields 1 W·h. This is on the order of US$1000 per kW·h delivered, which in turn is on the order of ten thousand times the cost for residential electricity. Another way to look at it is that the disposable battery probably required around a thousand times as much energy to manufacture and distribute to the consumer as it will yield when the consumer uses it. Rechargeable batteries obviously can have much better economics, and correspondingly lower environmental impact, when they take hundreds or thousands of recharges. But since the consumer has to pay for the electricity to recharge them, rechargeable batteries still end up costing more than electricity at the wall outlet, but not by nearly as large a multiple as disposable batteries, of course. Here is a site which purports to be about batteries and the environment. --Teratornis 20:25, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Homemade batteries

The article talks about replacing the fruit in the homemade batteries because it gets used up. I don't think it is the fruit that wears down the battery. Maybe the fruit gets old & moldy & doesn't conduct as wel, but it is not the cause of the battery not working. The energy comes from the chemical transformation of the metal electrodes into their oxides or their chlorides or whatever the transformation is. The fruit is merely the path that the electricity takes, like the wires in a circuit.

History

Is there any source for Franklin connecting capacitors in series and in parallel? I can well believe he connected them in parallel, because that is basically the same as having a larger Leyden jar. But the concept of series and parallel electrical connection were cutting edge in the 1830s, when Joseph Henry distinguished "intensity" (series) from ""quantity" (parallel ) connections of cells and of windings. Morse, for instance, in the 1830s had no concept that a low resistance electromagnet and a single cell could not operate a telegraph over an appreciable distance through the high resistance of the wires. To connect several Leyden jars in series to increase the voltage, Franklin would have needed to charge them individually with his friction machine, and place the jars on a thick clean glass surface to avoid the table they sat on from draining off the voltage between the outer foils of the jars. Absent a verifiable source, this claim should be removed.Edison 18:02, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

NiMH vs. NiCd text removed

I removed this section:

Most Ni-MH batteries can be recharged 500-1000 times whereas Ni-Cd batteries can only be recharged about 400 times. (I am afraid, but other sources states that it is possible to recharge Ni-MH twice as less times as Ni-Cd. That is: nickel-cadmium provides over 1000 charge/discharge cycles; nickel-metal-hydride the performance starts to deteriorate after 200-300 cycles if repeatedly deeply cycled. [2])

because of the two contradicting viewpoints. We need more authoritative sources if we're going to say which type lasts longer, if such a judgement can be made at all. --Heron 17:27, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

A battery, B battery Problem

There is a Wikipedia article for the B battery, used in tube radios. Now there is no link to it from here, and no link to it from the article on battery sizes. There used to be an article on the "A battery" used in tude radios, but now if you go to "A battery" you are misdirected to "AA battery," which has nothing whatever to do with the big old battery used to provide filament current for vacuum tubes. See my discussion above from June 7. I own a couple of radios from the 1920's which use A batteries, B batteries, and C batteries. I guess I will re-link this article to "B battery" and add a link from battery sizes to "B battery." How does one find an article which has been deleted, like "A battery"???Edison 14:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC) Found the batteries under Battery (vacuum tubes)#A battery etc and added links where appropriate. Also added historical info on the use of lead-acid batteries for electric cars in the early 20th century, radio batteries in the 1920's, and local batteries for early 20th century phone. These were probably a very big portion of the sales of batteries in the early 20th century. There should also be info on battery-powered flashlights. Edison 15:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The A/B/C battery pages have all been merged into Battery (vacuum tube) and links fixed --PeterJeremy (talk) 11:18, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Atomic Battery

Did you know that in the 50s or the 60s, modern science has invented the nuclear battery ? I've seen depictions in old science books, one saying that one of these can put out 250,000 volts, but the amps are low. It was the size of a "D" cell, was either a Kr-85 or a Cerium -150 unit. Martial Law 21:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

What on Earth do you need 250 kV's for? High voltage is good for long distance transmission, but for everyday use, locally, it doesn't make much sense. Dry air has about 30kV/cm breakdown voltage limit before it sparks through, meaning your 250 kV terminals would have to be separated by at least 10 cm, and even then they'd pretty much short circuit through air at the slightest instability in ionization, such as extra moisture, or just take the surface resistivity path and dance along the battery surface and short circuit. What's good about these batteries (functioning at reasonable, low voltages) is that they can last very long, and function even in places with no sunshine, or limited sunshine, such as deep space probes flying by Pluto, where the Sun is so distant that solar panels don't produce enough energy. As far as efficiency in energy conversion goes, these batteries aren't stellar, but neither is anything else nuclear (current power plants near 35%, your battery is probably much less.) Their capacity is still pretty good on a volume/weight basis, because nuclear fuel is so dense in energy, though their use in everyday terrestrial applications would probably never happen because of terrorism issues - any kind of nuclear battery is pretty much limited to heavily supervised space/military type applications. So why bother thinking about it? If you can come up with a tamperproof containment method, where you can give it to the public, and the container is so resistant that it cannot be melted at least to 3000C electric arc or acetylene torch, or punctured/crushed by dropping a 1 ton block of steel on it, and it can survive inside an explosion conventionally detonated TNT mixture at high pressures/temperatures with sudden shock, without anything happening to the container and its contents, then we can talk. Can you come up with such a tamperproof container? Otherwise forget about it.Sillybilly 06:05, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Batteries produce direct current?

I've fixed the description a bit. Batteries don't produce DC, since the current depends on the load. Look at the load current in any electronic device any you'll usually see lots of rapid changes (lots of AC.) Instead, batteries produce constant or DC voltage. The term "DC" means "unvarying" when used in this way. (Engineers use AC/DC to mean varying/unvarying, rather than their more obvious meaning as direct current and alternating current. Hence "DC voltage" means "constant voltage" and not "direct current voltage.") For this reason batteries are known as "DC devices."

Also, the idea that batteries produce a constant direct current is a very common misconception. L. McDermott just described this misconception as common among grade school science teachers (article in American Journal of Physics, Sept 2006 issue.) For this reason we should avoid saying that a battery can "produce current." It's more accurate to say that a battery produces voltage. A load can draw a current, but this current depends on the load, and if the value of load should vary, the current will also vary. Indeed, if the load is a changing capacitance, then the battery will "produce AC." --Wjbeaty 20:33, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Water-activated batteries?

I was surprised to not find any information on this page about water-activated batteries. They are quite neat devices and are in common use in certain areas such as weather balloons. [This] page has some basic information about these batteries. I recently took several photos of a water-activated battery that I'm putting on the Commons shortly in case someone wants to use them. I will add the links to this page when I do. JLamb 11:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

By all means, please be bold and add your information and photos as you see fit!

Atlant 13:26, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Started new page for water-activated batteries. Mainly wanted to start it to post my photos on. I'm sure someone will enjoy expanding it. JLamb 17:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Moved low quality text from end of article where it doesn't belong in the first place to this talk page

My Battery Summary!! By : Farasat Siddiqui (c)

Batteries

A battery can be thought up as a medium that stores energy or a can full of chemicals that produces electrons. Batteries come in all types of different shapes, sizes and prices. They range from small circular batteries used in watches costing only a few dollars to batteries for car engines costing $30,000.

Primary and Secondary batteries are the 2 categories of batteries. Primary batteries are the “cheaper” and most often used batteries but they can be "wasteful” they have to be thrown away because they are not rechargeable. Usually these are AA, AAA, D, C; etc.These can cause toxic waste problems. On the other hand Secondary Batteries are the rechargeable type. These are usually car batteries, computer batteries etc. Secondary batteries or rechargeable batteries are made up of 2 components, wet cells and dry cells. Wet cells are used to start up things and dry cells are used up to make batteries able to be recharged.

There are many battery types like, conventional lead acid at 35 watts per kilogram, sealed lead acid at 39 watts per kilogram, bi-polar acid at 50 watts per kilogram, nickel cadium at 55 watts per kilogram, nickel iron of 55 watts per kilogram, nickel-metal hydrate at 90 watts per kilogram, sodium sulphur at 110 watts per kilogram, and at the most lithium at 155 watts per kilogram.

Batteries operate from electrolytes. An electrolyte comes in liquids and it is a combination of chemicals. Batteries have two terminals. These are Positive and Negative. What is usually found at the top of a standard everyday battery is the positive terminal, the “thing” that comes out. It connects the battery to another object to make it work. A battery also needs a voltaic cell. A voltaic cell works by using a strip or rod of copper and sulfuric acid mixed with water. More cells create higher voltage.

From this you can see batteries have different forms, different types, different prices, and complex structures. Batteries are used in everyday life and people would be amazed by how many things would go wrong if batteries did not exist.

Moved to this talk page by Sillybilly 05:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Invention probably in 1799, announcement definitely in 1800

Most sources associate Volta's pile with the year 1800. Many phrase this in wording like "Volta announced his development of the pile in 1800." 1800 was the year when Volta sent a description of the pile to the Royal Society (in April), which was read before the Society in June, and according to one source "caused a sensation."

Some sources describe Volta as having invented the battery in 1799. This seems very likely, but quick searches didn't turn up anything really definitive as to when he actually did the work that he wrote about in April, 1800. The actual 1800 published paper does not address this.

Many sources do actually say that Volta first constructed the pile in 1800, e.g. "In 1800, Volta constructed the first galvanic cell,"[3]." Others say that Volta anounced it in 1800.

I suspect the sources that say he first invented or constructed it in 1800 are likely mistaken and careless, but in any case, it seems that it was the pile's announcement which "caused a sensation" and was really the significant event.

I think the safest thing to do is to stick to the statement that Volta announced the pile in 1800, while noting in a footnote that some sources say he invented it in 1799. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:56, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Why is this page so consistently vandalized?? --Thenickdude 02:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Discharge

Can anybody include information about battery discharging ?. Regards. --Mac 07:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

What (specifically) would you like to know that isn't already covered in the article?

Atlant 15:13, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

battery discharge rate ?. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.87.99.103 (talk) 19:51, 9 May 2007 (UTC).

Explosions

There is a recurring safety problem with lead-acid batteries, i.e they occasionally explode when their hydrogen+oxygen emissions are ignited by a nearby flame source (e.g. a pilot light). The reason for the emissions is touched upon, but there's no detail discussion. Since there's a growing trend to electric micro-cars, will there be a resulting epidemic of house explosions when they are being re-charged indoors at night? 154.20.137.51 23:32, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Hydrogen is only evolved when a battery is allowed to overcharge and electrolysis of the water in the electrolyte ensues. Presumably, the high-quality, intelligent battery chargers in electric cars wouldn't allow this to happen and there would be additional safety measures that would come into play if the charger tried to overcharge the batteries.

(Some) batteries can also explode if they are short-circuited. Presumably, the battery packs would be fused, but I suppose a single cell could certainly short-circuit under certain circumstances; lithium batteries are in the news from time-to-time for exactly this sort of thing.

Bottom line: I suppose battery-caused fires will be rare but definitely not non-existent. But then again, Fords have been known to burn houses to the ground when brake fluid leaked into the brake light switch and caught fire.

Atlant 16:07, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

What's that stuff?

let's talk about the processes behind the white precipitate which appears on AA batteries' terminals after a while. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.67.94.245 (talk • contribs).

Battery engineer

Can anybody give information about battery engineer and battery engineering ?. Thanks in advance. --193.145.201.52 13:30, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

There's links to sites that describe how they work, otherwise you may need to pick up an engineering textbook.. Elfguy 19:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Life Cycle & Reverse Capacity Tester

What is a Life Cycle & Reverse Capacity Tester? What is reverse capacity [4] ?. --HybridBoy 19:58, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the term you're looking for is reserve capacity, you can Google it per [5] "Reserve Capacity (RC) is a very important rating. This is the number of minutes a fully charged battery at 80 °F will discharge 25 amps until the battery drops below 10.5 volts." --D0li0 04:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

What we can find in a 9V battery

I've opened up a 9V battery and discovered 6 AAA sized batteries with the same voltage as a AAAA battery. I would like an explanation of this. I used a Duracell battery and this is a link to a picture of what i found:

http://www.lesjones.com/www/images/posts/aaa003.jpg

This image was sent in by me. I could not actually put this image here because every time i attempt to upload the image, nothing happens at all.

Efansay 06:03, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

The PP3 battery article mentions this. --Heron 11:55, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I seem to recall seeing the special flat, rectangular cells when I opened up one of these as a kid. Since any given battery chemistry can only have a single given voltage potential they need to stack cells in series to get the higher 9 volts. 1.5v*6=9v, 1.2v*7=8.4v, 1.2v*8=9.6v, or 3v*3=9v, etc... --D0li0 12:10, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Likewise, I last saw the flat cells many years ago. I'm not sure whether the cell shape depends on the chemistry, since only the zinc-carbon type existed back then, but I'm going to find out after my next shopping trip :-) Whatever the cell shape, of course, the cells are always connected in series. Oh, and if lesjones wants to give us his permission, we could take his photo and upload it for him. --Heron 12:29, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I can now confirm that modern Zn-C PP3s still contain six flat cells. Maybe I'll upload some photos later. --Heron 19:16, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Good article nomination on hold

The thing that really impressed me with this article was the good breadth of coverage of the subject, and the article was also quite well written. Having said this, the lead section does need to be totally re-written to summarise the main points of the article, and more inline citations are needed to support what is being said, especially in the "Battery explosion", "Battery packs" and "Traction batteries" sections which are without references.

The one other significant issue relates to the structure of the article and the positioning of the section on "Types of batteries". I would have thought that this section could have come much earlier, probably after "Classification of batteries". The "Effect of a battery's internal resistance" section also seemed somewhat out of place but I'm not sure where it should be moved to. You may wish to consider making a couple of sub-sections in the "Battery lifetime" section, and consider breaking up the very long paragraph on automotive lead-acid rechargeable batteries.

Minor points: Is the positive electrode really called the cathode? I thought it was the anode. There are a couple of one-sentence paragraphs, which should probably be expanded or incorporated into another paragraph. Also I couldn't see where some of the abbreviations in the Table (eg., ANSI, NEDA, IEC) were spelt out. This line at the end, "See also: battery electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicle", needs to be incorporated into the text. No need to number the bibliography; it's confusing.

I've decided to put this article on hold as the article is close to GA status, however the issues noted above must be dealt with before GA status can be awarded. I hope that this can be addressed within the seven days allowed by on hold, and wish you all the best with your editing... -- Johnfos 06:10, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I've addressed the following points: 1) I've moved "Types of batteries." 2) According to Dictionary.com, the cathode is negative when talking about an electron tube or electrolytic cell, but positive when talking about a voltaic cell or battery. I'll check back later. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:42, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Good article nomination failed

Hi King, I'm pleased that progress is being made with this article, but it is still not worthy of GA status at this time. I've added a couple of maintenance tags for further guidance. Please consider re-submitting the article after improvements are made. -- Johnfos 03:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Good article re-nomination

I saw this on GA, and decided to take a look. In my first quick pass, I found a grammatical error, a technical error, and a significant omission, which I fixed (see history). If this is indicative of the article as a whole, it is still not ready for GA. I don't have time to do a full review, but I would suggest withdrawing the nom and getting some expert help before renominating. You also might consider breaking it up and moving some detail to child articles, as it is a very comprehensive subject. Sorry to be brutally honest, but if you really want this to be GA, you should appreciate the feedback. It's difficult to cover such a broad topic well, so you have taken on a big task. Good luck.

Also, if the nom is not withdrawn, I would suggest only a subject matter expert review this, as it is a very technically demanding subject. Dhaluza 21:11, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

- - - -

As noted above, this is a technically demanding subject and I think the people who prepared the article have done a pretty good job.

Looking at the introduction, I think it is a bit too long. Some ways to improve it might be:

- don't get into factors affecting capacity in the introduction

- don't get into how to prolong battery life in the introduction

- don't get into factors affecting capacity in the introduction

- If the second sentence is about electrochemical cells THAT ARE NOT batteries, it is confusing to have it here because it interrupts the story.

- I think the Baghdad battery could be left out of the introduction. Interesting sidelight, but not required reading for someone looking for a basic understanding of batteries. (IMHO)

- Did batteries really become portable and useful "soon" after 1800? Personally, I find that difficult to believe.

- Jumping from the invention of the thing in 1800 to the environmental concerns around disposal is a big jump. There should be at least a sentence or two in between about the refining of the technology and the current (no pun meant) huge use of batteries.

- I gather that rechargeable battery means the same thing as secondary battery, but I had to get a long way into the article before that was clearly said. It might be better if this was made clear as soon as the second word was used. Also, if both words mean the same, do both need to be used in the introduction?

I hope some of this comment is useful. Wanderer57 23:27, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Second good article nomination failed

This article was posted as good article candidate on September 7, 2006. I have read the article, and while it is a pretty good article, I don't think it yet qualifies as a Good Article. Most of the article is well-written, interesting and in-depth. However, there are several substantial issues that I feel need to be changed before the article can pass GAN.

1. Overall organization: While each section of the article is self-contained and well-written, there is some overlap between the sections. Reading the article from start to finish, I get the impression (all too familiar in WP articles) that bits and pieces were written by different people and need some synthesis. For example, "Classification of batteries" says that there are two types of batteries, primary and secondary; the next section, "Types of batteries," says the same thing, except that now these two types are called "disposable" and "rechargeable." These two sections should definitely be merged, and there should be consistent naming throughout the article. In general, I think some more attention should be given to what is the best way to present the extensive information we've got here. One possibility:
   1. History: Current version looks good
   2. Operation: Technical information, including the sections: How batteries work, Conversion to energy, Effect of a battery's internal resistance
   3. Types of batteries: User-oriented information, including the current sections: Types of batteries, Classification of batteries, and Battery lifetime)
   4. Environmental considerations
2. References: From WP:WIAGA: a good article should provide "in-line citations from reliable sources for [...] statistics, published opinion," etc. Although there are quite a few references, many of them are not from reliable sources. Maybe this isn't the place for primary sources, since so much of the material here is uncontested scientific fact. But there should be much more of an effort to cite scholarly textbooks and articles, rather than commercial websites. A single textbook on battery engineering could probably easily replace 20-30 of the references to howstuffworks.com, about.com, and battery supplier websites.
3. Smaller issues: (the very minor issues I fixed myself, following are the things I didn't feel knowledgeable enough to do)
   1. From the lead: "Other types of electrochemical cells include electrolytic cells, fuel cells, flow cells, or voltaic cells." The term electrochemical cell has not yet been defined, so it is confusing to read about "other types" of such cells.
   2. History section: "presumably after the earlier use by Benjamin Franklin": this sentence is not clear; what is the relation between a battery and a Leyden jar? What is a Leyden jar?
   3. "How batteries work": The {{main}} given for this section is about as long as the section itself. Either shorten the section or remove the {{main}} template.
   4. Also in "How batteries work": I think this explanation could be improved by including the description of the flow of electrons in the cable, the flow of ions in the liquid, etc., so that there is a clear understanding of the circuit being closed. Also it would be helpful if discussion is about a concrete example (such as the Cu-Zn example in the figure), where the chemical reactions are described in chemical reaction notation. Sentences like "Each half cell emf is due to a charge-transferring chemical reaction at the electrode-electrolyte interface" don't say very much to someone who doesn't already know what all the terms mean, and they are not explained in the text.
   5. In the beginning of "Types of batteries" there are two long paragraphs about lead-acid batteries, a particular type of rechargeable battery, but only a very short paragraph about all other types of rechargeable batteries. Later on there is a short section "Rechargeable" where lead-acid batteries are only briefly mentioned.
   6. The subsection "Disposable" is listy.
   7. "Traction batteries": does this really belong inside "Battery packs" or should it be a separate section?
   8. The glossary doesn't really define the terms, only explains some abbreviations. What does "nominal capacity, in Ah (or submultiplier mAh) for a given voltage" mean? Presumably by capacity you mean amount of energy stored, but the link to capacitance talks about something totally different. You should also explain why we are talking about "nominal" capacity.

In conclusion, I think this article has a lot of useful and well-written information. It needs some high-level rearrangements and someone who knows a lot about this to read it start to finish and make corrections. Right now, I don't think it qualifies for GA standards. --Zvika 14:09, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Energy Density

I came here looking for some info on energy density, but a quick scan revealed none, so that would a useful addition to the article. I'm referring to Watt-hours per kilogram figures for the various types, sizes and anticipated future designs. If it was there but I didn't see then maybe it could be given its own section. EdX20 20:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Energy density figures are given on the Rechargeable battery page. BatteryGuy 19:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

list of disposable battery types clearly incomplete

Why is there no mention of whatever type of batteries Energizer e squared titanium batteries or Duracell PowerPix NiOx batteries are? I can't find anything about them on Wikipedia.69.148.183.20 20:02, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Schematic symbols not appropriate

Opening an electrotechnology article with a schematic symbol is not useful - anyone who knows electrical schematics will already know the symbols, and someone seeking general knowledge of a topic will only be baffled by the non-physical representation inherent in a schematic symbol. Even worse, North American and European conventions differ for some schematic symbols. Use schematic symbols only if they are critical to explanation and if you can't use a simpler block-diagram format that requires minimal prior knowledge to understand. --Wtshymanski (talk) 02:50, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

efficiency

Currently the article claims "Secondary batteries always yield less energy than was used to charge them... However, modern lithium designs have almost negated this wastage as they can have efficiencies of around 99%.[46]"

The reference given [6] does back up this claim: "Charging lithium-ion batteries ... The charge efficiency is 99.9% and the battery remains cool during charge."

However, I am still skeptical. I suspect that what I would call the "efficiency" (the total energy I get out of a battery, divided by the total energy I put into the battery) is much less than 99.9 percent.

So is my intuition wrong, and Li-ion batteries really are this amazingly wonderful? Or is the efficiency mentioned really measuring something else -- perhaps:

• "The coulombic efficiency of battery [is] the ratio of the number of charges that enter the battery during charging compared to the number that can be extracted from the battery during discharging."[7]?
• "voltage efficiency"?
• $1-{\frac {\mbox{energy wasted as heat during charging}}{\mbox{energy put into the battery while charging}}}$?
• some other measure of efficency that I've never heard of?

--68.0.124.33 (talk) 10:22, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

The best one can hope to achieve is the same charge out as went in. To achieve 99% efficiency then the difference between V_charge and V_discharge would have to be just 1%, as well as leakage being zero. That sure is asking a lot. Tabby (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 16:45, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

battery

its funny how someone who originaly typed up this article just automatically decided that the Baghdad Battery is a battery for sure. Its not a proven fact until it is, its just speculation and should be treated as such. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomasz Prochownik (talk • contribs) 01:33, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

History Channel

Today, this channel has revealed the existence of several unusual batteries, incl. a "nano-battery", of which 250 can be placed across a human hair. Its on, as of the sig. time here. 205.240.146.242 (talk) 05:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was No consensus and it's been open for nearly 2 weeks. I don't see an end to the impasse here. --Woohookitty^Woohoo! 11:28, 20 March 2008 (UTC) Battery (electricity) is the only article on batteries that has more than 5kb. all the rest are only stub articles. When someone says battery, they are referring to an electrical battery more than 99% of the time. Battery disambiguation should be moved to Battery (disambiguation). 199.125.109.76 (talk) 17:05, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Oppose requested move. Too many significant usages of the word 'battery' which are not electrical in nature. Binksternet (talk) 17:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

They can easily be found through battery (disambiguation). No need to make everyone typing in battery have to make an extra click from the disambig page. A survey of the top 100 results from googling battery reveals 3 for Battery Park, 3 for Battery (song), 1 for a soccer team, and 1 for Battery Cage (band). It isn't even close. The other meanings for battery that you are so concerned about don't even place, although Google helpfully adds related searches at the bottom for "criminal battery" and "battery band". A search of the first 978 google hits shows that 905 were electrical batteries, 18 were for military battery plus 28 for places named from military batteries such as Battery Park, 11 for battery cage, and 8 for songs and bands named battery. 6 were for criminal battery, 1 was for "battery of tests", and 1 had no reason for being linked by the search. 199.125.109.76 (talk) 17:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that Battery (electricity) is definitely the primary article, but in any case, it should probably be listed at the top of the disambig page. Sam Staton (talk) 18:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Oppose suggested move - I don't think a Google test is necessarily an appropriate way of determining the primary topic. The word 'battery' may most commonly refer to the electrical device, but I think the other uses are sufficiently significant that a disambiguation page is the best option. Terraxos (talk) 23:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose military meanings of battery would be expected in an encyclopedia, probably first. An electrical battery isn't even necessarily called battery, it could be called pile or something. 70.55.84.89 (talk) 04:22, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The question is, if someone types in "battery", what are they looking for? It turns out that 16 times as many people are looking for electrical batteries as artillery batteries, and 5 times as many as for criminal battery. How do I know? See these links. [8] [9] [10]. You are completely wrong about how many people are looking up artillery battery vs electrical battery. All of the lesser viewed articles can still be found from the battery (disambiguation) page, but there is no reason to make it hard for people to find the WP:PRIMARYUSAGE. I have a pretty good idea of what would come to mind first if I walked into a store and asked for a "pile". 199.125.109.70 (talk) 02:55, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

• Support - simple case of wp:primary usage. --Gonezales (talk) 21:07, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

• Support - The Oxford English Dictionary lists (electrical) battery as the first meaning. That makes sense. (Electrical) batteries are very familiar everyday objects. The concept is general knowledge across the developed and developing world. All the other meanings of battery, by contrast, are commonly used only within particular fields of study, such as in law: battery (crime), sport: battery (baseball), agriculture: battery farming, military: artillery battery, etc. Move the page to "Battery", and put a template such as {{otheruses4}} at the top to link to the other less common meanings. - Neparis (talk) 00:47, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

• Mild support. I would have thought the electrical battery would not be sufficiently "primary use" to take over the disambiguation, but traffic statistics suggest it is >5 times more common than any others. This is beyond threshold of "primary usage" for me, so I am OK to move disambiguation page to make room for this. Whydontyoucallme dantheman (talk) 19:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose -- If you asked a lawyer or a police officer, they might well tell you that Battery (crime) is the principal meaning. A military person might well say that Artillery battery is the principal meaning. -- Atlant (talk) 00:25, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not asking, I'm telling. Five times as many people look up battery electrical as battery crime, and sixteen times as many are looking for battery electrical as artillery battery. We are not interested in what one group of person is looking for, we are asking, is there a primary usage, and if so what is it. Believe me if the answer was anything different, I would be making the same argument in favor of that result. 199.125.109.36 (talk) 02:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

If you weren't asking, you'd be bold and just do it. Then there would be any one of a number of folks here who would revert the move and we'd be back where we started, discussing the move but with more ruffled feathers.

Back in March 2006 (before I was editing) there was a very similar discussion that ended up on the Oppose side of the fence. I don't think the significance of electric batteries has changed much since then. Yes, it's the most common day-to-day usage for many people but I prefer having the disambiguation page come first. The other usages of 'battery' aren't all trivial. Binksternet (talk) 07:54, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

IPusers can't move pages. I wouldn't have anyway because it is important to establish consensus especially on something that was discussed previously. We now have a lot better information on traffic statistics that was not available last year, let alone the year before. Anyone who is looking for the other uses can trivially get to them, but it is important to not make it unnecessarily difficult for the rest. 199.125.109.36 (talk) 18:27, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Comment — If you ask the average Joe or Joanna on the street, "What does 'battery' mean to you?", the answer will generally be to do with the electrical battery. A large percentage of the population will answer like that, say at least 80%. In most developed countries, lawyers, police officers, and military personnel each make up less than 1% of the population. I say the balance of numbers makes the electrical meaning of battery overwhelmingly dominant across the population as a whole. Lastly, no lawyer, police officer, and military personnel is ignorant of the electrical meaning of battery, while plenty of ordinary folks are unfamiliar with the military meaning or the legal meaning (which is less common in English speaking countries outside U.S.) - Neparis (talk) 00:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Further comment... To steal from User:Kevin McE who offered his viewpoint on this question in 2006: "A word such as 'battery' which has a number of meanings"... [many of which have evolved significantly such that they bear little relation to the original root source] ..."is precisely the circumstance for which disambiguation pages exist. Every word that has a disambiguation page has a most common usage, but that does not remove the validity of such a page." If a reader unfamiliar with the term types in 'battery' expecting to see something explaining the legal aspects of physical assault, that reader will suddenly be at the wrong page if we go ahead with the requested move. Using a disambiguation page as an intermediary step means that nobody gets shunted to the wrong page; the dab is the right page for all. Binksternet (talk) 01:31, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I fail to see the problem. The correct page is only a click or two away. It's not like they can't get to the right page. And the vast majority who were actually looking for that page are already there, without making them make an extra click. 199.125.109.78 (talk) 05:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

(od) Comment – Binksternet, the point is that there is one meaning (electrical) which is primary because the number of users familiar with it massively outnumbers the users of any of the other meanings. The electrical meaning is in common use by the entire population. The other meanings are in common use only by relatively few people working in the respective specialisms: lawyers, police officers, and military personnel. Consider that "salt" has at least three different meanings, but we don't insist on having a dab page for it; we just have Salt, and {{dablink}} at the top. That solution would work fine for Battery - Neparis (talk) 02:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Oppose, per many of the arguments above. Article length is not an indicator of importance. There are too many notable uses for "battery" to use the un-disambiguated space for one of them. Binksternet has it right when he said "Using a disambiguation page as an intermediary step means that nobody gets shunted to the wrong page; the dab is the right page for all." Parsecboy (talk) 15:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Please read WP:PRIMARYUSAGE which states that "if there is a well known primary meaning for a term or phrase, much more used than any other (this may be indicated by a majority of links in existing articles or by consensus of the editors of those articles that it will be significantly more commonly searched for and read than other meanings), then that topic may be used for the title of the main article, with a disambiguation link at the top". Yes there is a primary meaning that has a majority of links (over 1500 vs less than 300, 5 times as many), and yes there is a consensus that it will be significantly more commonly be searched for and read (5 times as many times). So just move it, please. 199.125.109.52 (talk) 04:19, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

problems with battery article

I have occasionally added historical and scientific entries about batteries, typically in the mode of adding to rather than replacing existing material. I have not looked at this article for many months, but there seems to be a significant removal of history (speculation about Baghdad batteries in place of well-founded information about Galvani) and removal of scientific information about charge storage (Amp-hrs) and current (Amp) associated with a battery. In its place seems to be more technical information (e.g., different types of batteries). I'm fine with more info about battery types, but not with removal of the other info. There has got to be room for both the scientific and the technical. There is a need for an editor to take control of various subsections, to decide what should be kept, and then find out who did the good writing and lock out others. In many ways this article has gone downhill in the past year.WMSwiki (talk) 01:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Formula for battery life

Is there a formula that will reliably relate the capacity to the battery life at discharge rates / times other than 20 hours? --Random832 (contribs) 03:41, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes. That formula is mentioned in the Battery (electricity)#Battery capacity and discharging section -- Peukert's law. --68.0.124.33 (talk) 03:56, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Text for photo

The text for the first photo about the names for the different type of batteries is confusing and makes things less clear User:Sobreira —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.145.220.99 (talk) 09:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

NASA reference

Someone dropped a bunch of text in from http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19640015888_1964015888.pdf. It's not appropriate to lift text from a source without credit and usually constitutes a copyright infringement. However, the source might have some good information that could be usefully added to the article. --Wtshymanski (talk) 02:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

History

When were ordinary AA/AAA/C/D batteries first commonly sold? -69.87.203.130 (talk) 01:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Charging primary batteries

Article currently mentions special chargers. But in fact the basic slow nicd charger does the job fine. And 'some claim' is an odd phrase for a phenomenon that's well established and is even built into a few commercial products. Tabby (talk) 16:55, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

"Typical" capacities for Alkaline cells

I read through the reference (#58 http://data.energizer.com/SearchResult.aspx). It seems to me that these specs may not necessarily be typical of generic alkalines. Comparing various D cells from Eveready: the Energizer, and e2 offerings are at 20Ah or 21.5Ah, but their Eveready line is at 19.5Ah. They show obsolete batteries that are at 17Ah, which could be representative of non-name brand Alkalines. Russella (talk) 05:25, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

other battery equations

The article currently points out that "The relationship between current, discharge time, and capacity for a lead acid battery is expressed by Peukert's law."

Are there other equations for other kinds of batteries? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 18:47, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

NanoBattery

Why is there no mention of the NanoBattery here: http://www.physorg.com/news3539.html Why did it disappear? Is there something I don't know. It says in the article it was planned for automobiles. Then nothing. Does anyone know? Cott12 (talk) 19:29, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Remove merge tag

There are many types of electrochemical cells besides batteries. I think that article should be reseverved more for a discussion of the chemistry and physics (half cellls, potentials, concentration, reaction series, etc.) leaving this one more applied to the business of rotting zinc to illuminate bulbs and related matters. I'm removing the merge tag again. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:25, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Secondary Battery information undocumented

The section on Secondary Batteries in this article is taken verbatim from the following web site, without attribution: http://www.esa.int/esapub/bulletin/bullet90/b90dudle.htm Among other difficulties, this leads to a reference to "Figure 2", although the figure is not present in the article, as well as a reference to "one of the authors", who presumably does not know that his work has been placed in Wikipedia. 28 November 2008

Sugar based power cell battery

A new type of battery based on sugar, was developed by Sony. Should information about it be included here? Ervinn (talk) 20:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)