Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I
Speaker 1: am an editor here at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as always his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: The quickest way to end a miracle is to ask
Speaker 1: why it is or what it wants. Okay, that one's
Speaker 1: a mystery to me too. I'll tell you what the
Speaker 1: source was at the end. Okay, after we've finished recording.
Speaker 1: Doesn't really give much of a challenge if I tell
Speaker 1: everybody what it came from. Uh, so we're gonna You
Speaker 1: might remember that from several episodes ago we talked about batteries. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's funny because, um what, what the listeners
Speaker 1: don't know is that beforehand, when we started comparing, uh
Speaker 1: just doing a quick comparison notes on what we were
Speaker 1: going to talk about, we realized that it was probable
Speaker 1: that we were going to go over and as it
Speaker 1: turns out, we had plenty for that and more left over.
Speaker 1: So here we are on batteries Part two. Mainly we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about rechargeable batteries and the issues around
Speaker 1: recharging batteries and some of the some of the other
Speaker 1: stories that are related to that, for example, batteries exploding. Yes,
Speaker 1: we'll get into that. So rechargeable batteries are a special
Speaker 1: kind of battery. Not all batteries are rechargeable. Well, that's true,
Speaker 1: and it isn't. That's the that's the funny thing about
Speaker 1: about the batteries. When I was doing some research on
Speaker 1: exploding batteries, um, I was reading about the thing that
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to do with alkaline batteries, which is
Speaker 1: to put them in a battery charger. The thing is
Speaker 1: about alkaline batteries. They can be recharged, but they're not
Speaker 1: designed to be and putting them in a charger will
Speaker 1: cause the cause them to start charging, and it will
Speaker 1: cause them to explode because they're not that's not the
Speaker 1: way they work. But it can happen. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not the The rechargeable batteries, the ones that are marketed
Speaker 1: is rechargeable, are designed to be rechargeable, and therefore you
Speaker 1: can put them in a rechargeable right, So in case
Speaker 1: you don't remember. The way a battery works is that
Speaker 1: there's a chemical reaction that generates electrons. The electrons travel
Speaker 1: through a circuit and then back to the battery because
Speaker 1: because there's a negative terminal and a positive terminal. Negative
Speaker 1: terminals where the electrons are coming through. Positive terminal is
Speaker 1: where the electrons are attracted to and re enter the battery.
Speaker 1: And eventually you use up all the chemicals that are
Speaker 1: inside the battery and it becomes inert it's used up
Speaker 1: and dead. Yes, in a regular battery, that's the way
Speaker 1: it works. Now with rechargeable batteries, what you do is
Speaker 1: you reverse the flow of electrons. You create a more
Speaker 1: powerful flow of electrons that will go back the way
Speaker 1: the electrons usually come. So you're reversing the entire process,
Speaker 1: and through that reversal, you begin to reverse the chemical
Speaker 1: reactions that took place inside the battery and it goes
Speaker 1: back to its pre discharged state. Yes, well, that took
Speaker 1: took way less time than I thought it would. Um
Speaker 1: so ever, lunch, Well, that's a um a simplification of
Speaker 1: the process. Of course, it all depends on the type
Speaker 1: of battery. There are many different types of chargeable batteries,
Speaker 1: some of the most popular being lead acid, UH, nickel
Speaker 1: metal hydride nickel m I on. But you mentioned lead
Speaker 1: acid before we go a bunch further, I did want
Speaker 1: to mention that is technically the first rechargeable battery, is it.
Speaker 1: It was discovered in eighteen fifty nine. There was a
Speaker 1: French physicist, Gaston Plant and Gaston he was as smart
Speaker 1: fellow and um, yes, he didn't discover it. He opened
Speaker 1: the door one day and said, what is this thing?
Speaker 1: Someone just left this thing laying or hey, that's a
Speaker 1: lead acid battery. He actually discovered the whole process of
Speaker 1: you know, using created a lead acid battery and discovered
Speaker 1: that by reversing the flow of all atron's by forcing
Speaker 1: electrons back through, you would essentially reverse the chemical reaction. UM.
Speaker 1: Lead acid batteries, of course are very important. They're used
Speaker 1: and almost well, they're used in all gas powered vehicles, right.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the battery that your gas powered vehicle
Speaker 1: uses to draw power for things like the headlights and
Speaker 1: the radio as well as other stuff. And the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about the lead acid battery in your car is
Speaker 1: that your car actually recharges the lead acid battery. That's
Speaker 1: the way it's supposed to work. Yeah, not always right,
Speaker 1: in a properly working vehicle, your car is recharging the
Speaker 1: lead acid battery, and I conclude the batteries part of
Speaker 1: the vehicle in that case. Yeah, what happens is you
Speaker 1: have a there's a device inside your engine called the
Speaker 1: alternator inside inside lots of engines. I had my very
Speaker 1: first car had a generator in it, just slightly an alternator, right,
Speaker 1: And and also if your alternator goes out, that's awful. Yes,
Speaker 1: as my wife discovered on one evening, Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: not good. That's a highway in in the Atlanta area,
Speaker 1: better known as the Perimeter. The Perimeter is also known
Speaker 1: as the Raceway in the Atlanta area where if you're
Speaker 1: not going eighty five miles you better be dead. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the alternator recharges the battery as you drive. So that's
Speaker 1: why your car battery will last a pretty long time. Now, typically,
Speaker 1: if you were to use a lead acid battery and
Speaker 1: you weren't recharging it, it would not last that long,
Speaker 1: Like the energy would give out much more quickly than
Speaker 1: it usually does. But it is getting constantly little amounts
Speaker 1: of recharge every time you're driving it, so um. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's again, that was the first rechargeable battery that was
Speaker 1: discovered to be you know that it was the first
Speaker 1: time anyone discovered that you could reverse that chemical reaction. Um.
Speaker 1: Since then, of course, we have discovered that other materials
Speaker 1: also work really well in this uh this format, including
Speaker 1: the nickel cadmium and the lithium ion and batteries like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're one of the things that's interesting about rechargeable batteries
Speaker 1: is that different rechargeable battery types are useful for different applications. Um.
Speaker 1: That's why you'll still see lead acid batteries used in cars,
Speaker 1: and you still see uh, nickel cadmium and nickel metal
Speaker 1: hydride batteries used in all kinds of things that you
Speaker 1: put double a, triple a, nine volts, etcetera. Uh in
Speaker 1: a little portable devices usually right right. And you see
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries in electronics such as computers and portable
Speaker 1: music players and the like. The different the different properties
Speaker 1: of the batteries themselves make them appropriate to use in
Speaker 1: those different uh, different applications, right, Because depending on the
Speaker 1: materials you're using for your battery, that's what's going to
Speaker 1: determine the the actual voltage and current that's going to
Speaker 1: come from that battery. So you know, some materials are
Speaker 1: not going to be useful for certain applications because it's
Speaker 1: going to require more electricity than that battery can generate
Speaker 1: unless you were to make an enormous series of batteries,
Speaker 1: and at that point you're you're sacrificing so much in
Speaker 1: terms of weight in order to get electricity that it's wasteful.
Speaker 1: That was one of the big complaints that I remember
Speaker 1: and the nineties about the idea of electric cars. They
Speaker 1: were using lead acid batteries and as most people know,
Speaker 1: lead is extremely heavy. Um, you know, a pound of
Speaker 1: lead being equal to the weight of a pound of feathers.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, you just blew my mind. Yeah, none. Nonetheless
Speaker 1: is anyone who has changed their car battery knows, um,
Speaker 1: other than to wear gloves while you're doing it and
Speaker 1: avoid charging it when you don't have any eye protection
Speaker 1: on and you're standing right over it. Um. They are
Speaker 1: extremely heavy because of of the lad inside, and that
Speaker 1: made a lot of the electric cars in the rather
Speaker 1: impractical because just the sheer weight of the amount of
Speaker 1: batteries needed to power a vehicle was made. It just
Speaker 1: really um, not practical at all. Yeah. UM. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until we discovered other materials that had better energy density
Speaker 1: than uh than the lead acid that that electric cars
Speaker 1: started to become h less of a of an obstacle
Speaker 1: that they used to be. Uh. Lithium ion certainly excels
Speaker 1: at that, right. Lithium ion has a very strong energy density. UM.
Speaker 1: It can generate quite a bit of electricity. And so
Speaker 1: you know, your relative to the size of another battery
Speaker 1: made out of a different material, lithium ion is uh
Speaker 1: is generates more energy essentially or more electricity, I guess
Speaker 1: I should say specifically. Now we were about to talk
Speaker 1: also about the exploding batteries. I think this kind of
Speaker 1: leads into it because people may have heard about lithium
Speaker 1: ion on batteries and having overheating issues and um, even
Speaker 1: batteries that have burst into flames or or exploded. However,
Speaker 1: you want to determine that, um. First of all, a
Speaker 1: lot of different batteries have the potential to burst into
Speaker 1: flame or explode because some of the materials inside lots
Speaker 1: of batteries happens to be flammable. I think it's safe
Speaker 1: to say it's a it's a good idea to treat
Speaker 1: the contents of batteries as hazardous. Some of them are caustic,
Speaker 1: some of them are are non toxic. But unless you
Speaker 1: happen to be intimately familiar with what's inside the can,
Speaker 1: it's better to treat it as something that will harm
Speaker 1: your skin. Uh is something you don't want to get
Speaker 1: in your eyes or nose or mouth. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: handle with care gloves and perhaps a pair of safety goggles,
Speaker 1: and you don't know exactly what it is that you're
Speaker 1: dealing and you don't want to be puncturing these things
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Don't throw batteries in the fire, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they there are chemicals in there that could be dangerous
Speaker 1: under different circumstances. Now, with lithium ion, that happens to
Speaker 1: be lithium, which is quite flammable as it turns out,
Speaker 1: And um, it's not just that the lithium is flammable.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of elements at play. One is
Speaker 1: that I didn't mean it that way, but anyway. One
Speaker 1: of them is that Uh. In the manufacturing process of
Speaker 1: creating a lithium ion battery, one of the byproducts within
Speaker 1: the battery are these tiny little metal particles. And depending
Speaker 1: upon how exacting the procedure is for the manufacturing process.
Speaker 1: So this really depends on the manufacturer, you know, how
Speaker 1: how careful they are, you may have more or fewer
Speaker 1: of those metal particles. A fewer would be better. UM,
Speaker 1: because what happens is as you charge the battery, or
Speaker 1: even as you use it, it starts to generate heat.
Speaker 1: It's one of the by products of this whole process.
Speaker 1: It's not just the chemical reaction. Doesn't just generate electricity,
Speaker 1: also generates heat. UM. As that heat is generated, the
Speaker 1: metal metal particles start to move around inside the lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries. Well there's um. There's a separator inside the
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries. If you remember in our previous batteries podcast,
Speaker 1: we talked about the anode and the cathode, and you
Speaker 1: have to have a separator between the two or else
Speaker 1: the electrons will just travel directly between the two instead
Speaker 1: of going through the circuit that you've plugged the battery into.
Speaker 1: So these little metal particles can sometimes puncture that separator
Speaker 1: and that creates a short circuit. So now the electrons
Speaker 1: can flow freely inside the battery instead of going through
Speaker 1: the circuitry like it's supposed to. And this will cause
Speaker 1: batteries to heat up much more quickly because you know,
Speaker 1: you've just you just removed that that pathway, and the
Speaker 1: electrons will move very quickly speed of light essentially UM,
Speaker 1: and the battery will heat up. And if the contents
Speaker 1: of that battery are flammable, as is the case with
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries, the battery could burst into flame, which
Speaker 1: is spectacular and dangerous and very scary and can set
Speaker 1: your pants on fire. Yes, I actually have an article
Speaker 1: about that's setting your pants on fire. Sorry, go ahead,
Speaker 1: we do. Indeed, UM that that was essentially what I
Speaker 1: was I was going to get to was the fact
Speaker 1: that a few years ago it UM UH, this thermal
Speaker 1: runaway as it's known UM, was a big item in
Speaker 1: the news. They had discovered Uh. Sony and Apple both
Speaker 1: got blamed for batteries a few lithium ion batteries that
Speaker 1: had UM overheated and caught fire. UM. As it turned out,
Speaker 1: they came from another you know, like most computer components,
Speaker 1: they came from another manufacturer. UM. And UH, of course
Speaker 1: I think there was the whole iPod setting your pants
Speaker 1: on fire thing, which, as Jonathan mentioned, there is an
Speaker 1: article on our side about it. UM. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, they're not these things obviously there there may
Speaker 1: have been in a lot like that, uh, defects in
Speaker 1: the manufacturing process, but in general, UM, it's very unlikely
Speaker 1: that it's going to happen. So uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: have also heard that it's possible to drop a lithium
Speaker 1: ion battery and it can cause it to UM can
Speaker 1: cause problems like that too. I would imagine it's probably
Speaker 1: the same thing if you drop it from you know,
Speaker 1: the lithium iron batteries are using a lot of power
Speaker 1: tools because it happens. I used to work for a
Speaker 1: company that sold power tools, and they said, don't drop
Speaker 1: your lithium ion batteries those toys r us right no,
Speaker 1: and uh so, although they do sell lots of lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries, because I believe I can't remember if lithium
Speaker 1: ion or or nick um not nickel metal hydride. The
Speaker 1: lead acid are the ones that they use in the
Speaker 1: kids vehicles. I think they're lead acid that they use
Speaker 1: for wheelchairs, and that I think that's in my notes somewhere,
Speaker 1: but I'll have to stop talking and let you oh, well,
Speaker 1: that never happens. For you guys out there who were
Speaker 1: curious about the the iPod story we have and the
Speaker 1: article that we have. The article title, just so you know,
Speaker 1: is how can an iPod set your pants on fire? Literally?
Speaker 1: And it was written by Josh Dreamy Eyes Clark of
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Um, so you should check that out.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's a good article, really good article. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's another way that these batteries can suffer damage is
Speaker 1: through overcharging. I know we had a podcast earlier, way
Speaker 1: way way back in the day where we talked about
Speaker 1: is it possible overcharge your devices? Uh, technically the answer
Speaker 1: to that is yes, it is possible. But most recharging
Speaker 1: cables and and systems have a safety measure in place
Speaker 1: that will shut off the recharging once the battery has
Speaker 1: reached capacity. They they have they are able to measure
Speaker 1: the the energy density of the battery that is currently
Speaker 1: being charged, and once it reaches its full level, the
Speaker 1: the recharging, Uh, the the electrons pathway to the electrons
Speaker 1: are just essentially cut off. So you're not going to
Speaker 1: overcharge your your battery using the right cable. Me. If
Speaker 1: you're using a really cheap cable or your Jerry Riggs
Speaker 1: something so that you can try to recharge your batteries,
Speaker 1: then I can't you know, vouch for that. You could
Speaker 1: theoretically overcharge your battery and cause damage and possibly that
Speaker 1: could lead to an explosion or fire. Uh. I was
Speaker 1: also going to mention, UM, did you find the thing
Speaker 1: you were looking for? Yes, Lead acid batteries are used
Speaker 1: in in wheelchairs and cars and kids toys, so stuff
Speaker 1: like the UM you know, the little cars that they
Speaker 1: use where you get in has the motor UM. Pretty
Speaker 1: nifty things until you get your toes run over a
Speaker 1: few times. I'll take your word for that. I mean
Speaker 1: I don't have one of myself. I don't fit in
Speaker 1: them anymore. I, you know, am pleading that I know
Speaker 1: nothing about that. Okay, So there was something else I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about rechargeable batteries, which was the memory effect. Yes,
Speaker 1: but that's not pertinent to all different types of the
Speaker 1: chargeable batteries. Really, Nickel cadmium is the one that is
Speaker 1: typically to blame for the memory effect, and I can
Speaker 1: explain that if you want, please do. UM, I found
Speaker 1: a whole series of articles um by somebody that I
Speaker 1: really liked, and I'm now trying to scroll down until
Speaker 1: I get to uh the name, get to his notes. Um.
Speaker 1: But the chemical makeup of the battery is has a
Speaker 1: lot to do with the memory effect UMA for me, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll let me explain what the memory effect actually, that's good.
Speaker 1: So the memory effect is when if you let's say,
Speaker 1: let's say you've got a battery and you've you've used
Speaker 1: up about half the charge of the battery, and then
Speaker 1: you recharge it, and you use up about half the
Speaker 1: charge of the battery, and then you recharge it. You
Speaker 1: do this a few times. Certain batteries, the nickel cadmium
Speaker 1: batteries in particular, will eventually retain memory wory of that
Speaker 1: you used and think that's the full of the batteries charge.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you will never be able to
Speaker 1: get a percent performance out of that battery. What will
Speaker 1: happen is it'll discharge to and then the battery, uh
Speaker 1: will stop working because of the memory effect. It it
Speaker 1: doesn't literally think, but it quote unquote thinks that it
Speaker 1: has uh it is has discharged its full charge even
Speaker 1: though it remains untouched. Now you're going to say, has
Speaker 1: found a whole series of articles by uh, someone from
Speaker 1: CADEX Electronics. His name was Isador Buckman, and um wrote
Speaker 1: a whole series of really interesting articles about about batteries.
Speaker 1: He's very apparently knowledgeable about batteries. Um. But there's the
Speaker 1: nickel based batteries have something that Buckman calls rock content,
Speaker 1: and that's and that's the memory, that's the memory effect basically. UM.
Speaker 1: The idea is that you have to go for a
Speaker 1: complete cycle, which is what we were talking about a
Speaker 1: long time ago in our Charging Batteries podcast before, where
Speaker 1: you let it run all the way out and then
Speaker 1: you know, plug it in and land it charge all
Speaker 1: the way back up to give it a full complete
Speaker 1: cycle of charge. Um. But but the thing is, UM,
Speaker 1: the the oxidate or the chemical reactions basically UH make
Speaker 1: part of the battery unusable. And that's why you have
Speaker 1: to go through the deep cycle process to do that. Now,
Speaker 1: the other types don't have that same problem. And in fact,
Speaker 1: lithium ion you're I I remember being told never to
Speaker 1: do a full discharge of lithium ion battery because that
Speaker 1: will make it um useless. You can't recharge it once
Speaker 1: it's been fully discharged. Yeah. Um. Marshall Brain's article on
Speaker 1: how lithium ion batteries work on the site to us
Speaker 1: that UM, and what happens in that case, according to Buckman,
Speaker 1: is that the oxidation just by use and aging the
Speaker 1: a lithium ion battery will gradually just become unusable just
Speaker 1: because the the guts of it, if you will, are
Speaker 1: are going through the oxidation process. UM. Buckman says there's
Speaker 1: about two or three years UH for doing that and
Speaker 1: whether or not you're using it. If you charge up
Speaker 1: your batteries to be used in your emergency emergency flashlight,
Speaker 1: you put the flashlight in a drawer. Um, two years
Speaker 1: go by and there's suddenly an electrical storm and you
Speaker 1: lose power, you reach for that flashlight, you may not
Speaker 1: have any battery left. Yeah, you still have to replace
Speaker 1: it regularly. UM. You know, you can keep it at
Speaker 1: at at charge in a in a cool place to
Speaker 1: help prevent that, but you're not going to prevent it
Speaker 1: no matter what. And there's also no memory effect with
Speaker 1: with UH with lithium I and you don't really need
Speaker 1: to condition them, which is which does con predict what
Speaker 1: we said in that podcast because I remember specifically saying that, so,
Speaker 1: uh bad on me for not finding Mr Buckman's article before. Then.
Speaker 1: Well that was the thing is that it's confusing, right,
Speaker 1: because it all depends on the type of battery. With
Speaker 1: the nickel camium, you have to you don't have to,
Speaker 1: but if you want to avoid the memory effect, you
Speaker 1: need to discharge it as fully as possible before you
Speaker 1: start recharging it, because otherwise the little crystals that will
Speaker 1: form in that battery will well coagulate and get bigger,
Speaker 1: and the crystals will get bigger. And as those those
Speaker 1: crystals essentially you can think of it as they take
Speaker 1: up space and become inert. So the more crystals formed,
Speaker 1: the less power your battery is going to have. So
Speaker 1: if you discharge it all the way, those little crystals
Speaker 1: don't really form as quickly, they don't coagulate or whatever,
Speaker 1: then you can recharge it and you're fine. Um, if
Speaker 1: you just discharge it a little bit, then those crystals
Speaker 1: get bigger and bigger until that part of the battery
Speaker 1: gets unusable. So yeah, in that case, you do need
Speaker 1: to use it all the way down and then recharge
Speaker 1: it all the way back up. Uh. Lithium ion is
Speaker 1: not that way. In fact, some places I've seen so
Speaker 1: that there's uh, the best way to keep your lithium
Speaker 1: ion battery lasting a really long time is to keep
Speaker 1: it charged between forty and and you don't charge it
Speaker 1: over sixty, and you don't let it drop below forty
Speaker 1: and it will last. That'll that'll let the battery last
Speaker 1: the longest over the lifetime of the battery, not I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about you know, playtime or whatever. If you
Speaker 1: hook up a lithium ion battery and it's charged at
Speaker 1: six you're not going to get you know, ten hours
Speaker 1: of use out of it like you would with a
Speaker 1: full fully charged battery. But over the course of the
Speaker 1: lifetime of the battery, you'll get more years of use
Speaker 1: out of it. So that's a little too much battery
Speaker 1: management for me. I can't do that. I can't. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be you know, sitting over my devices
Speaker 1: watching that that little number creep up and then say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's at six percent, I need to unplug it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not really realistic. But the other yeah, the consequence
Speaker 1: of that is that I do this knowing that the
Speaker 1: battery is probably not gonna last as long as it
Speaker 1: would if I did take that trouble. Yeah, it's too
Speaker 1: much trouble for me. Well, it's funny because, um, a
Speaker 1: lot of the batteries, a lot of rechargeable batteries, um,
Speaker 1: have a very long lifespan if you manage them. Well, um,
Speaker 1: but the properties of each are different, like for example, uh,
Speaker 1: lead acid batteries need exercise. They really actually need to
Speaker 1: be used a little bit, um frequently, you know, just
Speaker 1: a little bit at a time to keep them healthy
Speaker 1: essentially and keep them from from running out on their own. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you left a car alone long enough,
Speaker 1: you may discover that, uh, you know, the battery might
Speaker 1: have been fine when you left the car, but now
Speaker 1: when you finally returned to it, the cars not starting
Speaker 1: up properly. That could be because the battery itself, you know,
Speaker 1: has been left unattended for too long. It also can
Speaker 1: happen in very cold weather because that slows down the
Speaker 1: chemical reactions. Right. Yeah, going through the my notes, and
Speaker 1: there's just I've got a lot on on how batteries
Speaker 1: should be charged. Um. That that's something else interesting too. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I've I've seen the chargers that have the
Speaker 1: like the fast charge cycle advertised. You don't do that
Speaker 1: with elithium ion battery. It's very bad for a lithium
Speaker 1: ion battery to try to make any attempt to uh
Speaker 1: to dump a charge into it. And really the fast
Speaker 1: charge cycle um like you see for some of these devices,
Speaker 1: it's not really meant to be the regular way you
Speaker 1: charge the battery. It's supposed to be sort of an
Speaker 1: emergency situation type thing. It's not that can actually be
Speaker 1: harmful to a batteries lifespan if done frequently enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's certain certain kinds of batteries where the chemical balance
Speaker 1: in there is the sort that can accept a very large,
Speaker 1: uh short burst of voltage with out they're being too
Speaker 1: much damage to the battery itself. But not all batteries
Speaker 1: are created equal in that. So that's a good point.
Speaker 1: And of course you should always pay attention if you
Speaker 1: ever hear a story about a battery recall, definitely pay
Speaker 1: attention to make sure that you know none of the
Speaker 1: devices you have are are covered under that because this
Speaker 1: is serious stuff. If they discover that there is a
Speaker 1: fundamental flaw in the manufacturing process that could lead to
Speaker 1: a fire, you definitely want to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know a lot of people who leave
Speaker 1: let's say, like their their computer on all day. You know,
Speaker 1: they might have a laptop at home and they'll just
Speaker 1: leave the computer on all day rather than turn it
Speaker 1: off and turn it back on and they get back. Um,
Speaker 1: if that battery has a fundamental flaw in it, then
Speaker 1: that could become a source of you know, a fire.
Speaker 1: You come back home and there's nothing there. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people might be surprised, depending on
Speaker 1: how long they've owned a computer. Even desktop computers have
Speaker 1: a battery in them, that's true. Um usually anyway, I
Speaker 1: can't think of one that doesn't. My even my Amiga
Speaker 1: from back in Can we get through one episode without
Speaker 1: you and talking about that Amiga? No? So um no,
Speaker 1: there but there is a battery and there basically so
Speaker 1: if you shut it down and maintains the clock, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why when you plug your computer in after or
Speaker 1: if the power has gone out or whatever, and you
Speaker 1: look at the clock and it's still set at the
Speaker 1: correct time, or at least the time it was keeping
Speaker 1: before the power went off, that's why. Um, let's see,
Speaker 1: is there anything else specifically that covers everything that I had.
Speaker 1: I was really I was just determined to talk about
Speaker 1: pants getting set on fire. UM. But yeah, if you
Speaker 1: are one other thing that I thought of, just a tidbit. Um,
Speaker 1: if you have a device that you know is going
Speaker 1: to be sitting for some time, or like a kid's
Speaker 1: toy that runs on batteries that you're putting away, it's
Speaker 1: a good idea to take the batteries out of it. Um.
Speaker 1: We talked about the um corrosive nature or of the
Speaker 1: chemicals inside batteries. I went to an energizer actually has
Speaker 1: an interesting bit on their website about cleaning up. Basically,
Speaker 1: they say that the contents of their alkaline batteries are
Speaker 1: actually they're they're they're fairly non toxic, really, and they
Speaker 1: don't have to be recycled, although I do recommend doing that,
Speaker 1: and I think they would too. UM, but they're they're not.
Speaker 1: There's nothing terrible that would leach out of them, as
Speaker 1: would be most of the chemicals and rechargeable batteries. However,
Speaker 1: if left too long, these the chemicals inside can't start
Speaker 1: leaking out. And even if you don't aren't necessarily concerned
Speaker 1: about the device, UM, it can cause like if you're
Speaker 1: going to donate it to somebody. So you found these
Speaker 1: old toys and you want to give them, do you
Speaker 1: know charity and say, oh no, go ahead and take them.
Speaker 1: Those leaking chemicals can damage the device and can cause
Speaker 1: problems from other people. So if you do encounter a
Speaker 1: a leaking battery, you know, please be very careful with it,
Speaker 1: handle it with gloves. Probably a good idea to use
Speaker 1: safety glasses and put it in a leakproof container when
Speaker 1: you're done. Now, speaking as someone who has been burned
Speaker 1: by battery acid, I second that recommendation. In car batteries,
Speaker 1: you know that there and there's some seriously dangerous chemicals
Speaker 1: and there's acid in there um that can burn you
Speaker 1: very badly, and and car batteries should be handled very
Speaker 1: very carefully if you try to recharge them yourselves, I
Speaker 1: think you just let car stuff handle that. They can
Speaker 1: also generate hydrogen, which is extremely flammable. So you get
Speaker 1: an electric spark or a flame anywhere near a battery
Speaker 1: that happens to have some hydrogen built up around it,
Speaker 1: and that is seriously badness. I'm sure you've all seen
Speaker 1: video of hydrogen explosions and it is dramatic and scary.
Speaker 1: You don't want to have that happen. Yes, that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually Um, even with trying to plug an alkaline
Speaker 1: battery and a charger. Um, that's what goes on, is
Speaker 1: not I don't know if it's hydrogen gas. That will
Speaker 1: admit to not knowing that. But uh, the recharging process
Speaker 1: in those batteries starts a build up of gases inside
Speaker 1: the canister that the battery is in, and that's what
Speaker 1: causes it to explode if you try to recharge a
Speaker 1: non rechargeable battery. So that's what It's very dangerous to
Speaker 1: do that and nobody really wants to have that problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so don't do it. All right. Well, that pretty much
Speaker 1: wraps up this discussion on rechargeable batteries. I got a
Speaker 1: big charge out of it myself. Did you find it shocking?
Speaker 1: Not really? I found a revolting really do you guys?
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