Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and I end nearly
Speaker 1: every episode of tech Stuff asking y'all if there are
Speaker 1: any topics you'd like to hear me explain on the show.
Speaker 1: And recently a lot of you have been sending in requests,
Speaker 1: which is awesome, and I'm getting to those now that
Speaker 1: those tech glossary episodes are all done. And first up
Speaker 1: is a message from Brian Perez, who wants to know
Speaker 1: about fast charging technology, which is a great and legitimately
Speaker 1: confusing suggestion because there are a lot of different technologies
Speaker 1: out there. So today we're gonna talk about how batteries work,
Speaker 1: because that's important for us to understand this technology. Then
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk more about how rechargeable batteries work, because
Speaker 1: clearly that's going to be important. And then we'll talk
Speaker 1: about what makes fast charging possible and some of the
Speaker 1: different technologies that are out on the market and why
Speaker 1: it's such a mess. Uh So let's do that, and
Speaker 1: we'll start with the basics of electricity and that lovely
Speaker 1: equation that tells us that wattage that that's a measurement
Speaker 1: of power, is equal to current in ampiers times voltage
Speaker 1: or volts, And it's good to remember the difference between
Speaker 1: current and volts. Current refers to the amount of electric
Speaker 1: current moving across a circuit, and voltage is the force
Speaker 1: that drives that current. So frequently folks like me use
Speaker 1: the analogy of water pressure to describe voltage and the
Speaker 1: amount of water actually flowing through a system to describe current.
Speaker 1: Uh So, voltage is sort of the umph at which
Speaker 1: current gets pushed. We'll come back to the watch discussion
Speaker 1: towards the end of this episode, because that's really at
Speaker 1: the heart of fast charging technology. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: how batteries work in general and the evolution of the battery. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing we have to keep in mind is that
Speaker 1: batteries don't create energy. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
Speaker 1: Batteries store energy in the form of chemical energy. They
Speaker 1: release energy in the form of electricity. So we're really
Speaker 1: talking about converting one type of energy into another. That
Speaker 1: is possible, right. We can't create or destroy energy, but
Speaker 1: we can change it from one form to another. So
Speaker 1: that's the heart of what batteries do. Batteries go through
Speaker 1: an electro chemical reaction and through that process they release
Speaker 1: electrons i eat. Electricity. The reaction takes play, and electrons
Speaker 1: are a byproduct. They are released as part of this
Speaker 1: chemical reaction. Even when a battery isn't being used, this
Speaker 1: reaction can still occur, though typically at a very much
Speaker 1: slower rate. Right otherwise, batteries would be dead before you
Speaker 1: ever got a chance to use them, but it does happen.
Speaker 1: This is called self discharge. This is one of the
Speaker 1: factors that determines the shelf life of a battery. So
Speaker 1: if you ever look at just a long list of
Speaker 1: all the different types of batteries, you'll typically see the
Speaker 1: listed you know, average shelf life of them, and if
Speaker 1: it's a shorter shelf life, that tells you that there's
Speaker 1: a higher rate of of self discharge. Generally speaking, that's
Speaker 1: actually being a little too reductive because it also depends
Speaker 1: on the capacity of the battery, like how how much
Speaker 1: volume does the battery have, But we're not going to
Speaker 1: dive too deep into all of that. So batteries that
Speaker 1: are in hot environ ments also tend to self discharge
Speaker 1: at a faster rate than batteries that are in a
Speaker 1: colder environment, So you don't want your batteries to be
Speaker 1: in someplace that's going to be really hot. However, this
Speaker 1: also leads some people to make a decision that is
Speaker 1: not very wise. It is not a good idea to shove,
Speaker 1: you know, unused batteries in the freezer so that you
Speaker 1: can make them last longer. The lower temperatures that the
Speaker 1: batteries experience. That means that it will impede the chemical
Speaker 1: reaction when you plug it into something. So this means
Speaker 1: that a cold battery will not perform as well as
Speaker 1: a normal battery until it gets up to temperature. And
Speaker 1: when I say that the battery will eventually go dead
Speaker 1: through self discharge, often we are talking about a factor
Speaker 1: about years, right, So self discharge doesn't happen overnight. There's
Speaker 1: no reason to put batteries into the fridge or the
Speaker 1: freezer or anything like that, because you're likely going to
Speaker 1: use them before they would have self discharged anyway. Setting
Speaker 1: aside stories about you know, ancient Babylonian containers that might
Speaker 1: have been used as some sort of proto battery, possibly
Speaker 1: for the purposes of electro plating materials. The ancestor of
Speaker 1: the modern battery really took shape in sevent with Alessandro Volta,
Speaker 1: and his name gives us the word volt. More importantly,
Speaker 1: our history starts with a disagreement between two scientific thinkers,
Speaker 1: and those thinkers were Volta and Luigi Galvani. Now, Galvani
Speaker 1: had observed in the seventeen eighties that if he were
Speaker 1: to take a frog that was really most sincerely dead
Speaker 1: and expose said dead froggy's leg muscles by you know,
Speaker 1: cutting away the skin and then touching that muscle with
Speaker 1: an arc made from iron and brass, it would cause
Speaker 1: the muscle to twitch. Now, Galvani had already run experiments
Speaker 1: using things like an electrostatic generator, so a device that
Speaker 1: generates an electrostatic charge, and he knew that there was
Speaker 1: some connection between muscular movement and electricity because of this.
Speaker 1: But this was different, right because he was using what
Speaker 1: appeared to be an inert pair of metals. It was
Speaker 1: an iron embrass, and there was no electro static machine
Speaker 1: generating a charge. He wasn't even doing this during a thunderstorm.
Speaker 1: He had observed that thunderstorms could also produce electrostatic charges
Speaker 1: that could then influence experiments like these, But this was
Speaker 1: a case where neither of those things were components. So
Speaker 1: he said, the electricity must reside within the muscle itself.
Speaker 1: If it's not in the iron embrass, it's gotta be
Speaker 1: in the muscle, and Volta thought that his buddy Galvani
Speaker 1: was totally on the wrong track. Volta's assertion was that
Speaker 1: the cause of the twitching was due to the use
Speaker 1: of two different metals that were connecting to one another
Speaker 1: through the medium of a moist conductive UH substance, that
Speaker 1: being the froggy's leg muscle. So Volta decided to experiment
Speaker 1: in the field of electrochemical reactions to see if perhaps
Speaker 1: he was right and if Galvanni was wrong. So Galvanni,
Speaker 1: by the way, was totally right in that muscle movements
Speaker 1: are the result of electrochemical processes, but in this case
Speaker 1: Volta was saying, yeah, but that's not what's happening here.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're you're making the right hypothesis. So
Speaker 1: Volta created a stack of material He alternated layers of
Speaker 1: zinc UH. He then put in some cardboard that had
Speaker 1: been soaked in brine, and then he would put on
Speaker 1: layers of silver. So he kind of alternated with these,
Speaker 1: and he was able to create a kind of proto
Speaker 1: battery that we refer to with the charming name of
Speaker 1: voltaic pile. There were some pretty big limitations to this, however.
Speaker 1: The strength of this battery depended in part on the
Speaker 1: number of layers that he could build up. However, he
Speaker 1: couldn't make it too tall, because the layers on top
Speaker 1: would start to press down so hard on the layers
Speaker 1: below that the brine in that cardboard would get squeezed out,
Speaker 1: and then it would suddenly be less effective. Also, the
Speaker 1: metal would corrode fairly quickly due to the electrochemical reactions,
Speaker 1: and uh, the the byproduct would build up on those plates,
Speaker 1: and eventually they would impede the reaction from continuing, and
Speaker 1: you'd see a decrease in electrical output because of it. Now,
Speaker 1: just a few decades after Volta's work, there was an
Speaker 1: English chemist named John Frederick Danielle who made an or Daniel.
Speaker 1: I suppose it doesn't have an E at the end,
Speaker 1: so I'll say daniel it's d A N I E
Speaker 1: L l uh. He made an early battery using a
Speaker 1: plate of copper, a plate of zinc, and some gnarly chemicals.
Speaker 1: Let's see if I can paint a mental picture. So
Speaker 1: he took a big glass jar and at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the inside of this jar he put the copper plate,
Speaker 1: so the copper plates at the bottom. On top of
Speaker 1: the copper plate, he poured in a solution of copper sulfate.
Speaker 1: By the way, these days, copper sulfate is used in
Speaker 1: stuff like herbicides because it kills plants pretty darn effectively. Also,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about batteries, were often talking about chemicals
Speaker 1: that are acidic. That is pretty common. You've probably heard
Speaker 1: about battery acid and it's one of the many reasons
Speaker 1: why you don't want to mess around, you know, cutting
Speaker 1: open batteries and stuff. There are a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: for that, specifically when you get the things like lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries and um that's one of the many ones.
Speaker 1: So then he then on top of this copper sulfate solution,
Speaker 1: he poured in a zinc sulfate solution. Now, copper sulfate
Speaker 1: has a greater density than zinc sulfate, so the copper
Speaker 1: sulfate settled down at the bottom of the jar, and
Speaker 1: the zinc sulfate floated to the top. You've probably seen
Speaker 1: like mixtures of oil and water that do this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Daniel then suspended a zinc plate within these
Speaker 1: zinc sulfate half of the jar. So imagine like a
Speaker 1: hook that hooks over the side of the jar, and
Speaker 1: hanging from that hook is a plate of zinc held
Speaker 1: horizontal above the copper sulfate level. Right, So you've got
Speaker 1: two separate levels here, and two separate sulfates uh to
Speaker 1: each plate. He attached a conductive wire. And now we
Speaker 1: need a bit of an anatomy lesson for batteries. So
Speaker 1: let's consider your typical battery. Let's say that you just
Speaker 1: if you happen to have a battery nearby, you can
Speaker 1: even look at one and and kind of get the
Speaker 1: lay of the land. So you've got two terminals with
Speaker 1: your battery, Like if it's a double a battery, it's
Speaker 1: on either end of the battery. Right. These are the
Speaker 1: points of the batteries that connect to a circuit or
Speaker 1: or a load. This is the pathway that electrons will
Speaker 1: take where at some point along the way they will
Speaker 1: presumably do some sort of work. So you've got a
Speaker 1: positive terminal and you've got a negative terminal. You could
Speaker 1: connect these two terminals directly to each other with conductive wire,
Speaker 1: but that's not a great idea. That would lead to
Speaker 1: the battery discharging very rapidly, and for some tymes of batteries,
Speaker 1: that could be dangerous as the battery will heat up
Speaker 1: from the rapid electrochemical reaction, potentially leading to combustion or explosion.
Speaker 1: So not a good idea to do this. Attached to
Speaker 1: the positive terminal inside the battery is the cathode. Connected
Speaker 1: to the negative terminal inside the battery is the annode. Together,
Speaker 1: these are the electrodes of the battery. There's a separator
Speaker 1: that keeps those two electrodes from touching. Otherwise we would
Speaker 1: have a very similar situation to what I was talking
Speaker 1: about before, where you connect the two terminals with a
Speaker 1: conductive wire, only in this case it would be internal
Speaker 1: inside the battery as opposed to connect did through an
Speaker 1: external wire. The separator does allow an electric charge to
Speaker 1: flow between the two electrodes. Uh. There's also a medium
Speaker 1: called the electrolyte that facilitates the flow of electric charge.
Speaker 1: So during discharge, The anode reacts with the electrolyte and
Speaker 1: experiences and oxidation reaction. Ions that is, atoms or molecules
Speaker 1: that carry an electric charge from the electrolyte will react
Speaker 1: with the anode and that produces a new compound between
Speaker 1: the two and in this process also releases electrons. So
Speaker 1: now we've got our supply of electrons popping over onto
Speaker 1: the cathode side. The cathode goes through a reduction reaction
Speaker 1: in which ions, electrons, and the cathode begin to form compounds.
Speaker 1: This process takes in electrons while the process that the
Speaker 1: anode generates electrons, but the separator keeps the electrons from
Speaker 1: just rushing over from one side to the other. Right,
Speaker 1: you would think, all right, if we've gotten excess of
Speaker 1: electrons and like charge repels like, then the electrons don't
Speaker 1: want to be next to each other, right, they'd rather
Speaker 1: get to the other side, especially as that side grows
Speaker 1: more positive because the electrons are negative and opposite charges attract.
Speaker 1: But the separator prevents the electrons from doing this. They
Speaker 1: can't get to that side unless you open a pathway
Speaker 1: for them. That pathway is the circuit. So when you
Speaker 1: open up a circuit. You create a circuit that goes
Speaker 1: connects between these two electrodes. Now the electrons have a
Speaker 1: way to get away from the negatively charged side of
Speaker 1: the battery and head to the positive charged side of
Speaker 1: the battery, and they will do that even if it
Speaker 1: means they have to do some work along the way.
Speaker 1: Thus we have batteries. So with Daniels battery, which we
Speaker 1: call the Daniel cell, the wire connected to the zinc
Speaker 1: plate served as the negative terminal. The wire attached to
Speaker 1: the copper plate at the bottom of the jar was
Speaker 1: the positive terminal. And the cell worked really well. But
Speaker 1: because we're talking about liquid components here, it couldn't really
Speaker 1: be used in any sort of application that the thing
Speaker 1: would be moved around because it would just be slashing everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: So it had to be stationary, and that really limited
Speaker 1: what you could do with this kind of battery. A
Speaker 1: few decades later brings us up to the eighteen sixties.
Speaker 1: That's when George Leshan switched things up by making a
Speaker 1: battery out of a porous pot. He took some crushed
Speaker 1: manganese dioxide with a little bit of carbon in it,
Speaker 1: and he used that as the cathode. He packed that
Speaker 1: onto the inside of the porous pot. The annode was
Speaker 1: a zinc rod that was actually kept separate from the pot.
Speaker 1: So you had a pot on the inside of which
Speaker 1: was this mixture of manganese dioxide and carbon, and then
Speaker 1: you have this zinc rod. Then he leant put both
Speaker 1: the pot and the zinc rod into another container filled
Speaker 1: with ammonium chloride that acted as the electrolyte. Now, this
Speaker 1: solution of amonium chloride seeped through the porous pot to
Speaker 1: make contact with the cathode and that allowed the electrochemical
Speaker 1: process to begin and the carbon rod that would also
Speaker 1: be inserted into this Uh, this pot acted as a
Speaker 1: collector for the electrons. So that's what you would use
Speaker 1: to you know, direct the electrons outward to whatever circuit.
Speaker 1: This type of battery saw widespread use in telegraph stations,
Speaker 1: but still relied on a liquid electrolyte, and UH that
Speaker 1: really made it unsuitable for stuff what moved around a lot,
Speaker 1: so still not ideal. We would see all that change
Speaker 1: thanks to the work of inventor Carl Gossner from Germany.
Speaker 1: I originally put in my notes that he was a
Speaker 1: German inventor, But now that I read that, it sounds
Speaker 1: like he invented Germans, and I'm pretty sure they were
Speaker 1: around before him. Anyway, Gassner made several improvements to batteries,
Speaker 1: and that meant that they would be practical in many
Speaker 1: of our applications. For one thing, Gastner had the bright
Speaker 1: idea to use zinc as the container material for the
Speaker 1: battery itself. So the body of the battery was made
Speaker 1: out of zinc and it also served as the negative electrode,
Speaker 1: so it was doing double duty. It was the container
Speaker 1: and the negative electrode, so the actual body of the
Speaker 1: battery served as one of the two electrodes the anode.
Speaker 1: In case you're trying to keep these things straight. Inside
Speaker 1: the battery, he put in a folded paper sack which
Speaker 1: served as the separator, which kept the interior of the
Speaker 1: zinc case separate from the electrolyte. For the cathode, he
Speaker 1: used a mixture of manganese ox side and in the
Speaker 1: middle of this he suspended a carbon rod, which again
Speaker 1: acted as the electron collector. And later he would add
Speaker 1: zinc chloride to the electrolyte because it reduced the rate
Speaker 1: at which the electro light would corrode the zinc uh
Speaker 1: of the case. It would It would then extend the
Speaker 1: batteries useful life by slowing down that that process. But
Speaker 1: the most important part of this invention was that Gasner's
Speaker 1: battery is what we call a dry cell battery. It
Speaker 1: was not full of sloshy liquid. Even though the electrolyte
Speaker 1: was sort of a jelly liquid e kind of thing,
Speaker 1: the rest of it was all dry. I meant that
Speaker 1: you didn't have to worry about the battery components slash
Speaker 1: galt all over the place, admit that you could invert
Speaker 1: it and it would still work. It opened up a
Speaker 1: lot of applications for batteries. In the eighteen nineties, the
Speaker 1: National Carbon Company, a US based organization, developed the Columbia
Speaker 1: dry cell battery, which was another improvement. They first started
Speaker 1: making La Sanche batteries in the eighteen nineties, but again
Speaker 1: those were wet cell batteries. An engineer at the company
Speaker 1: named E. M. Jewitt created a one point five volt
Speaker 1: dry cell battery and got the blessing from the company
Speaker 1: to make a commercial version that they could actually sell.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen nine six NCC began selling a one
Speaker 1: and a half volt six inch long dry cell battery. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: the National Car been Company would buy a fifty steak
Speaker 1: in another company called the American Electrical Novelty and Manufacturing Company.
Speaker 1: The battery making part of that company joined in CC
Speaker 1: and together they became known as ever Ready, and much
Speaker 1: later that company would change its name to Energizer, So
Speaker 1: that one dates all the way back to the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. All the batteries I mentioned so far are
Speaker 1: what we call primary batteries. So a primary battery is
Speaker 1: a one use battery. That means once the battery goes dead,
Speaker 1: it's really most sincerely dead. It's not coming back because
Speaker 1: we're talking about a different chemical component reacting with another
Speaker 1: chemical component to produce electricity, and then you get by
Speaker 1: products as well, and you eventually run low enough on
Speaker 1: those initial chemical components that you're not getting enough juice
Speaker 1: and there's no way to reverse that process. Right once
Speaker 1: it turns into the byproducts, the battery has become a nert.
Speaker 1: Now a few things that can that can happen to
Speaker 1: make a battery less effective. One is that, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: you could have your chemical agents depleted in the battery,
Speaker 1: So what you've got now is essentially a container just
Speaker 1: filled with useless goop as a result of all these
Speaker 1: electrochemical reactions taking place. Another is that whatever you're using
Speaker 1: as an electron collector might get covered in deposits, and
Speaker 1: that blocks the collector's ability to collect electrons. And so
Speaker 1: you might still have some viable juice in the battery,
Speaker 1: but because of this corrosion coding elements inside the battery,
Speaker 1: it's not able to have that that process go effectively.
Speaker 1: Corrosion is also an issue as well for the electrodes.
Speaker 1: If you've ever had an old battery and something and
Speaker 1: you've just seen this gross kind of build up on it,
Speaker 1: that's often the corrosion I'm talking about. And all of
Speaker 1: these things lead to a batteries and ability to produce current.
Speaker 1: With primary batteries, there's really no way to reverse this process.
Speaker 1: The electrochemical reactions will stop, and then you've got to
Speaker 1: toss the battery. Primary batteries tend to be relatively inexpensive.
Speaker 1: They also tend to have a fairly long shelf life,
Speaker 1: but they're also wasteful. When we come back, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about secondary batteries, also known as rechargeable batteries. But first,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. When I was talking earlier
Speaker 1: about the development of the battery, the last inventor I
Speaker 1: mentioned was Carl Gassner, who invented the dry cell battery,
Speaker 1: which was in but the rechargeable battery actually predates the
Speaker 1: dry cell battery, and the person who generally gets the
Speaker 1: credit for inventing them is Gaston Plante. No one invents
Speaker 1: like Gaston or imprints like guests. Okay, I'll never mind.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty nine, he created a lead acid battery
Speaker 1: that you could actually recharge his batteries and ode was
Speaker 1: made of a sheet of lead, and he used a
Speaker 1: sheet of lead dioxide for the cathode, and he placed
Speaker 1: a linen cloth between those two sheets. Then he rolled
Speaker 1: this into a cone shaped spiral. He immersed this cone
Speaker 1: in a solution of sulfuric acid, which is pretty dangerous stuff,
Speaker 1: and the chemical reaction that resulted released electrons and boom,
Speaker 1: you get yourself a battery. Gaston discovered that if he
Speaker 1: applied a charge to this battery so that current flowed
Speaker 1: into the battery, it would actually reverse the electrochemical reaction
Speaker 1: that produced the electrons. This battery then had a way
Speaker 1: to discharge and then recharge. In eighteen sixty he presented
Speaker 1: a nine cell battery to the French Academy of Sciences,
Speaker 1: and his peer Camille Alphonse for continued to work on
Speaker 1: the invention and saw it actually become a commercial product.
Speaker 1: Camille would later make improvements to this battery, including a
Speaker 1: process that would increase the battery's capacity for storing electricity.
Speaker 1: And we still use lead acid batteries today. It's the
Speaker 1: type of battery you find in your typical internal combustion
Speaker 1: engine vehicle. So your typical car that has an internal
Speaker 1: combustion engine also has a lead acid battery. Now, I
Speaker 1: mentioned that Gaston created a nine cell battery, and that
Speaker 1: is something that we should chat about for just a moment.
Speaker 1: Some batteries, like car batteries, consist of multiple cells that
Speaker 1: connect to one another within the battery itself. So a
Speaker 1: typical car battery would have six cells connected in series.
Speaker 1: If you connect batteries in series, you increase the voltage
Speaker 1: that those batteries produce. Now, remember, voltage is kind of
Speaker 1: like pressure. That's how much umph is behind an electrical current,
Speaker 1: but it's not a measure of the amount of current itself.
Speaker 1: So you're not increasing the current by adding batteries or
Speaker 1: mattery cells in series. You're increasing the voltage. If you
Speaker 1: add them in parallel, it's different. But we're talking about
Speaker 1: in series one after the other. So your typical lead
Speaker 1: acid battery has cells that individually have a voltage of
Speaker 1: two volts, but because they are connected in series, the
Speaker 1: battery overall has a voltage of twelve volts. Right, you've
Speaker 1: got six cells each two volts. You've got them in series,
Speaker 1: so it multiplies the voltage to twelve. Most of your
Speaker 1: typical household batteries, like double as, triple AS, C and
Speaker 1: D batteries, those typically come in at one and a
Speaker 1: half volts. But again, if you connect them in series,
Speaker 1: you get more voltage. So a flashlight that has two
Speaker 1: batteries connected in series is actually relying on three volts
Speaker 1: for the voltage. Another thing we should touch on is
Speaker 1: that because batteries convert chemical energy into electrical energy, there's
Speaker 1: a fundamental limit as to how much juice a battery
Speaker 1: can hold. That doesn't mean all batteries are equal. Depending
Speaker 1: on the materials used to create that electrochemical reaction, you
Speaker 1: can get more efficient and energy dense batteries. For example,
Speaker 1: lead acid batteries don't really have great energy density, which
Speaker 1: you typically measure either by comparing how much energy the
Speaker 1: battery can store compared to that batteries mass, or how
Speaker 1: much energy it can store compared to that batteries volume.
Speaker 1: There are two different ways of looking at it. Alkaline batteries,
Speaker 1: which make up a lot of the typical batteries we
Speaker 1: use today, the non rechargeable primary batteries that we use today,
Speaker 1: those are better from an energy density metric, meaning, based
Speaker 1: on that batteries mass or volume, it can hold more
Speaker 1: energy than a lead acid battery. But we also have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind that these are much smaller than
Speaker 1: lead acid batteries. The batteries power density and energy density
Speaker 1: depend on the mass and volume of the battery and
Speaker 1: the type of chemical components that make up the anode,
Speaker 1: the cathode, and the electrolyte. So we're ultimately talking about
Speaker 1: a chemical physical process that relies on a limited amount
Speaker 1: of source material, like a limited amount of fuel, if
Speaker 1: you will. So this means that it's very hard to
Speaker 1: make longer lasting batteries based on what we have today,
Speaker 1: unless you're making literally just larger batteries. You can't really
Speaker 1: squeeze more out of physics. It's just you're you're hitting
Speaker 1: the fundamental limits of what is possible in a chemical reaction. Now,
Speaker 1: in tech, we've got Moore's law, which we generally interpret
Speaker 1: as meaning that every two years or so, the processing
Speaker 1: power or processing speed of computers tends to double. That's
Speaker 1: the very you know, dumbed down version of Moore's law,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of how we interpret it today. But
Speaker 1: we do not see batteries on a similar trajectory, right.
Speaker 1: We don't see batteries increase in capacity at the same
Speaker 1: rate as we're seeing processing speed or processing power. This
Speaker 1: is because the laws of physics don't really care if
Speaker 1: we need better batteries, which puts pressure on electronics manufacturers
Speaker 1: too really create ways to limit how much electricity gadgets
Speaker 1: actually require as they operate. Not just electronics manufacturers, but
Speaker 1: also you know, the companies that design things like operating systems.
Speaker 1: In order to make batteries last longer. You can't just
Speaker 1: build better batteries. That's that's that's a much slower process.
Speaker 1: It means that you have to be smarter with how
Speaker 1: much energy you try to access so barring some miraculous
Speaker 1: alien technology, we're not likely to see astronomical improvements to
Speaker 1: battery life, though there are people who are working on it.
Speaker 1: It's just we're not likely to see giant leaps there.
Speaker 1: So that means we just have to be smarter about
Speaker 1: how our gadgets access power. Often when we're talking about
Speaker 1: rechargeable batteries, we are thinking about bowl devices like smartphones, tablets,
Speaker 1: laptops and handheld gaming systems and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: These devices almost exclusively today rely on lithium ion batteries. Now,
Speaker 1: if you were able to look inside a battery, and
Speaker 1: I urge you to never ever ever do this because
Speaker 1: there is dangerous stuff in those batteries, but you would
Speaker 1: see that the battery consists of layers of carbon graphite
Speaker 1: and lithium on the anode side. This is on the
Speaker 1: negative terminal side of the battery, and we refer to
Speaker 1: the arrangement of lithium that's kind of nestled between lattices
Speaker 1: of carbon graphite as intercalation. So they're intercalated between these layers.
Speaker 1: You can think of like the carbon graphite as being
Speaker 1: almost like a net and the little lithium atoms are
Speaker 1: nestled inside between layers of this net. Lithium has three electrons,
Speaker 1: and you might remember from basic science class that electrons
Speaker 1: orbit the nucleus of an atom within certain energy shells,
Speaker 1: and that only a specific number of electrons can inhabit
Speaker 1: each shell. For for the shell that's closest to the nucleus,
Speaker 1: you can only have two electrons. So that means that
Speaker 1: each lithium atom has two electrons in that first energy shell,
Speaker 1: and there's a single lonely electron that's orbiting the nucleus
Speaker 1: in the next energy shell out from the nucleus. That
Speaker 1: also means it's pretty easy for lithium to give up
Speaker 1: that electron. It's not holding onto its super hard. That
Speaker 1: means the lithium atom, when it lets go of this electron,
Speaker 1: becomes an ion. It's a charged atom of lithium, a
Speaker 1: positively charged one in this case, because it's given up
Speaker 1: an electron which carries a negative charge, but it's held
Speaker 1: onto all of its protons, which have positive charges. So
Speaker 1: when a lithium ion battery connects to a circuit and
Speaker 1: that circuit becomes complete, the outermost electrons in the lithium
Speaker 1: atoms go through the pathway of the circuit and leave
Speaker 1: the lithium atoms now ions behind and head towards the
Speaker 1: positively charged cathode side of the battery. That's because the
Speaker 1: electrons carry that negative charge and negative is attracted to positive,
Speaker 1: and the lithium ions left behind they do have that
Speaker 1: positive charge to them. That will become important in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: the cathode is positively charged because there is cobalt there
Speaker 1: that has given up electrons to oxygen. So that means
Speaker 1: that you have cobalt ions in a lattice like structure
Speaker 1: on the cathode side. So that's the positive side of
Speaker 1: your battery. Ah. But I hear you say. If electrons
Speaker 1: are ditching lithium and they're heading over to the cobalt
Speaker 1: side and joining cobalt ions, they are leaving behind lithium ions,
Speaker 1: doesn't that ultimately become unsustainable because of the electric charges involved,
Speaker 1: Because if electrons are joining positively charged cobalt ions, they're
Speaker 1: eventually balancing out that charge. Right the electrons joined the
Speaker 1: cobalt ion, they can't allout that positive charge. Meanwhile, you've
Speaker 1: got lithium ions back behind on the anode side and
Speaker 1: they have a positive charge wouldn't that just mean that
Speaker 1: eventually the electrons would stop and feel less of a
Speaker 1: pull towards the cobalt side and be pulled back towards
Speaker 1: the lithium side. Well, that would happen, except the electrolyte
Speaker 1: in between the anode and the cathode allows the lithium ions,
Speaker 1: the possibly charged lithium ions, to cross over from the
Speaker 1: anode side to the cathode side, and essentially the lithium
Speaker 1: ions settle in between the layers of cobalt very much
Speaker 1: in the same way that they had done when they
Speaker 1: were lithium atoms over on the carbon side. The electrolyte
Speaker 1: also prevents electrons from passing through it, Otherwise, again, batteries
Speaker 1: would be useless because we would never convince those little
Speaker 1: electron suckers to go through a circuit and do work
Speaker 1: for us. In addition to the electrolyte, there's a non
Speaker 1: conductive separator between the anode and the cathode because again,
Speaker 1: you don't want them to come into contact with one another.
Speaker 1: Uh So, there is a real good reason for this,
Speaker 1: And just as a spoiler alert, I'll just say, boom
Speaker 1: on the carbon side of the battery. You know, the
Speaker 1: the anode side, you have a sheet of copper that
Speaker 1: acts as a collector. On the cobalt side, you have
Speaker 1: a sheet of aluminum to serve as the collector. The
Speaker 1: positively charged lithium ions don't regain electrons in this process
Speaker 1: when they come over to the cobalt side, so they
Speaker 1: remain positively charged and they stay over there nestled in
Speaker 1: the cobalt nets. But by moving the positive charge from
Speaker 1: the annode to the cathode, the poll for the electrons
Speaker 1: remains steady and the electron flow or electricity can continue
Speaker 1: for as long as there are a sufficient number of
Speaker 1: lithium atoms left on the anode side to give up electrons.
Speaker 1: But once that amount gets depleted enough, then the battery
Speaker 1: no longer has enough charge to allow electricity to flow.
Speaker 1: During the recharging process, the source of electricity, whether it's
Speaker 1: from a charging cable or docking station or wireless recharge
Speaker 1: or whatever, it applies a voltage that's high enough to
Speaker 1: reverse the flow of electrons so that now they will
Speaker 1: move from the cathode side back over to the anode side.
Speaker 1: The recharging process strips the electrons away from the cobalt,
Speaker 1: so once again you have cobalt ions left behind. Sends
Speaker 1: the electrons back over to the anode side, and the
Speaker 1: positively charged lithium ions escape their intercalation with the cobalt
Speaker 1: sheets they move back through the electrolyte over to the
Speaker 1: anode side. This happens because the positively charged cobalt ions
Speaker 1: and the positively charged lithium ions repel each other, but
Speaker 1: the cobalts locked into place right, It's like a lattice,
Speaker 1: so it can't really it can't move through the electrolyte.
Speaker 1: The lithium ions are free to move across to the
Speaker 1: other side, so they make the journey through the electrolyte
Speaker 1: back over to the anode and they are reunite with
Speaker 1: the electrons, and the lithium ions become lithium atoms, you know,
Speaker 1: neutral charge. They rejoined with the electrons through the charging process.
Speaker 1: Eventually you get to a point where you're back to
Speaker 1: where you started, with an anode side filled with lithium
Speaker 1: atoms and a cathode side filled with positively charged cobalt ions,
Speaker 1: and then you can use the battery all over again. Now,
Speaker 1: the layers I just described are not in a flat
Speaker 1: plane in your typical lithium ion battery like it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like a flat sandwich with a cobalt layer on
Speaker 1: one side and a carbon layer on the other side
Speaker 1: and electro light in the middle. No, Instead, these are
Speaker 1: layers that then get folded over and over and over
Speaker 1: again many times to maximize the energy density of the battery.
Speaker 1: So if you could see through a battery case, you
Speaker 1: would see what looks like tons of layers, it's actually
Speaker 1: just really a very long series of layers that's just
Speaker 1: been folded over itself many times. Now, if the anode
Speaker 1: and cathode could touch one another, the chemical reaction would
Speaker 1: accelerate rapidly and it would generate a lot of heat
Speaker 1: in the process. This is what can lead to a
Speaker 1: fire or an explosion, and it's why we have strict
Speaker 1: rules about bringing lithium ion batteries on board planes. So
Speaker 1: you might remember a few years ago when Samsung released
Speaker 1: the Note seven smartphone, there were a few incidents of
Speaker 1: batteries catching fire or even exploding, and it was a
Speaker 1: big enough problem that Samsung recalled the Note seven on
Speaker 1: two separate occasions, attempting to address the issue. According to Samsung,
Speaker 1: there were two flaws in battery design that led to
Speaker 1: this issue. The first battery, which came out from one manufacturer,
Speaker 1: had two electrodes that were somewhat weak and prone to bending,
Speaker 1: and that meant that if they bent in a certain way,
Speaker 1: they might actually be in close proximity, in fact, close
Speaker 1: enough to come in contact with one another, which created
Speaker 1: a short circuit, which means the alli trunks could flow
Speaker 1: through this shortcut rather than through and you know whatever
Speaker 1: circuit they were supposed to go through, this being the
Speaker 1: Note seven, and they would do so really quickly, and
Speaker 1: that would heat the battery up beyond the failed point,
Speaker 1: and you would have a fire or explosion. Now, the
Speaker 1: second problem came after Samsung first recalled the Note seven
Speaker 1: and replaced the batteries with a new one from a
Speaker 1: totally different manufacturer. But this battery also had a design flaw,
Speaker 1: a different one. Apparently, the welding on the new batteries
Speaker 1: was defective and allowed for a similar short circuit issue
Speaker 1: in the replacement batteries, So the Note seven handsets that
Speaker 1: were supposedly fixed could still have a similar issue with
Speaker 1: catching on fire or even exploding. These defects gave Samsung
Speaker 1: a bit of a black eye. And it really spelled
Speaker 1: doom for the Notes seven hand set. Those Samsung stressed
Speaker 1: that the phone design itself was not at fault, it
Speaker 1: was just really super bad luck with two different battery manufacturers.
Speaker 1: You know, when we come back, I'm going to dive
Speaker 1: into how fast charging works. But before I do that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. You know, one thing I
Speaker 1: didn't cover before the break with lithium ion batteries is
Speaker 1: that attached to the battery is special circuitry that can
Speaker 1: control how much electricity flows into the battery during recharging. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's sort as safety measure really and and this is
Speaker 1: important that you can prevent a battery from overcharging, which
Speaker 1: could damage the battery that could lead to one of
Speaker 1: those short circuit scenarios and talked about. So you want
Speaker 1: everything to be really controlled when you're recharging, to make
Speaker 1: sure that the battery remains intact and you don't create
Speaker 1: a dangerous situation or you know, just cause damage to
Speaker 1: the battery which reduces its useful lifespan. So let's talk
Speaker 1: a moment about USB cables only a little bit, because
Speaker 1: that's just one of the ways that we can use
Speaker 1: to charge a lot of electronics and it's one of
Speaker 1: the ways that's compatible with some of the fast charging technologies.
Speaker 1: If you listen to my recent tech glossary episodes, you
Speaker 1: know that USB stands for Universal Serial Bus and it's
Speaker 1: a type of connector and cable system, you know, ports
Speaker 1: and connectors and cables that replaces a lot of other
Speaker 1: ports and connectors and cables that we used to have
Speaker 1: to rely on all the time to connect anything from
Speaker 1: keyboards or computer amounts to computers or printers, all these
Speaker 1: sort of things that we need to have all these
Speaker 1: different proprietary cables for. It effectively helped replace those and
Speaker 1: of course we find USB ports on all sorts of
Speaker 1: gadgets beyond computers and smartphones. I've got a little shower
Speaker 1: radio that recharges via USB, so it's on all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff, and the USB standard allows for the transmission
Speaker 1: both of data and of power. But how much power
Speaker 1: the USB cable can carry depend upon the type of
Speaker 1: USB port and the type of cable itself, So you're
Speaker 1: going to find that the amount of wattage or power
Speaker 1: that a USB connection can carry is going to depend
Speaker 1: on those ports and the cable being used. Essentially, you're
Speaker 1: limited to whichever is capable of carrying the lowest amount
Speaker 1: of power. So, while USB cables are largely backwards compatible
Speaker 1: and USB ports are largely backwards compatible with cables, if
Speaker 1: you're using an older cable connected to a later port,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be limited to what that older cable can do,
Speaker 1: even if the port is capable of greater things. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to get at here. So let's say
Speaker 1: you're using a USB two point oh cable to connect
Speaker 1: your phone to a charging block. Uh, the two point
Speaker 1: oh standard has a maximum power output of two and
Speaker 1: a half watts. That's five milliamps of current and five
Speaker 1: volts of voltage, and you multiply those together you get
Speaker 1: two point five watts. Fast charging technologs can recharge batteries
Speaker 1: faster by allowing for greater wattage to flow into the battery. So,
Speaker 1: for example, USB three point oh keeps the same five
Speaker 1: volts as USB two point oh. All right, so the
Speaker 1: voltage is the same from USB three point oh to
Speaker 1: USB two point oh. However, USB three point oh can
Speaker 1: carry a current of up to point nine apps. That
Speaker 1: means you get a max power output of four and
Speaker 1: a half watt's with USB three point oh. This tends
Speaker 1: to be kind of the default wattage that gets delivered
Speaker 1: via charging by USB USB three point one and three
Speaker 1: point two. They include us B p D. P D
Speaker 1: stands for power delivery that can support up to forty
Speaker 1: eight volts, so a much higher voltage and up to
Speaker 1: five amps, So that means you can have a maximum
Speaker 1: power delivery of two forty watts. That's a huge leap
Speaker 1: from four and a half what's obviously four and a
Speaker 1: half to two forty UM USB four which is right
Speaker 1: around the corner now, it will similarly support up to
Speaker 1: two d forty watts of max power, but most devices
Speaker 1: do not take advantage of this um, especially fast chargers, don't. Uh.
Speaker 1: The max you see with fast charging right now tends
Speaker 1: to be right around one hundred what's so not all
Speaker 1: the way up to two forty What's like It's kind
Speaker 1: of like anything where you think about about pressure, uh
Speaker 1: and output, you get to a point where the pressure
Speaker 1: and output will be too much to benefit from. It
Speaker 1: would only be overwhelming or dangerous. So we don't see
Speaker 1: fast charging really hitting that two forty what maximum at
Speaker 1: least I'm not aware of one the ones I'm aware
Speaker 1: of the fastest ones top out at one hundred watts.
Speaker 1: So the USB C cables those are the ones that
Speaker 1: have the well shaped reversible plug at the end, which
Speaker 1: removes that annoying trade of having to figure out which
Speaker 1: way is the right way up for your USB cable. Uh,
Speaker 1: those are great if you happen to have stuff that
Speaker 1: has USB ports on them, USB C ports on them,
Speaker 1: and they have us B p D built into them.
Speaker 1: So by default, most USB three point o ports just
Speaker 1: push out that four and a half. What's so, even
Speaker 1: if you do have a USB C cable the uh
Speaker 1: it's you know, technically capable of delivering more power to
Speaker 1: a device than four and a half. What's that's all
Speaker 1: the juice you're gonna get if you have that cable
Speaker 1: plugged into a standard USB three point o ports. So
Speaker 1: again you're limited by the lowest output of whatever component
Speaker 1: you're using as part of your setup. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: curious about what kind of ports your computer has or
Speaker 1: what kind of USB cables you have, you can always
Speaker 1: look at the color inside the ports or inside the
Speaker 1: connectors of those cables. If it's why eight, Well, you've
Speaker 1: got yourself a relic that supports the old USB one
Speaker 1: point oh standard. If it's black, it's USB two point oh.
Speaker 1: A blue port is USB three point oh superspeed, and
Speaker 1: if it's teal, that means you've got a USB three
Speaker 1: point one superspeed or superspeed plush. And so that's true
Speaker 1: with both cables and ports. If you've got both the
Speaker 1: same color, then you know, all right, well, this is
Speaker 1: at the highest that these two can support. Complicating matters
Speaker 1: is that there are numerous fast charging technologies on the market,
Speaker 1: and each of them has a different maximum power delivery rating.
Speaker 1: Apple's fast charging tech is built on USB p D
Speaker 1: and has a one what maximum power delivery So typically
Speaker 1: you actually have to buy a fast charging cable and
Speaker 1: charger because Apple does not usually include these in the
Speaker 1: box with its products. Similarly, if you want to connect
Speaker 1: via a lightning cable, you would need to make sure
Speaker 1: that you had a lightning to USBC cable and that
Speaker 1: it had USB p D compatibility built into it in
Speaker 1: order to enjoy that fast charging capability. Apple's circuitry in
Speaker 1: their devices like iPhones it monitors battery charge, so the
Speaker 1: fast charging ability kicks in as long as the battery
Speaker 1: capacity is measured at being below eight. Once the battery
Speaker 1: reaches an eight charge, fast charging switches off and the
Speaker 1: device will charge at the slower standard rate to avoid overcharging.
Speaker 1: So this means if you run your iPhone until the
Speaker 1: battery dies and then you use a fast charger, you
Speaker 1: won't have to wait too long before you're at but
Speaker 1: beyond that you'll see that charging has slowed down significantly.
Speaker 1: Google also uses USB p D for its fast charging solution,
Speaker 1: but Google's max power is significantly lower than Apples. The
Speaker 1: Google fast charging tech maxes out at just a teen
Speaker 1: what's compared to Apple's one hundred, so it delivers electricity
Speaker 1: to devices with two amps of current at nine volts
Speaker 1: of voltage. Like Apple, Google also limits fast charging two
Speaker 1: devices that are below battery capacity. So if you have
Speaker 1: a Google phone and an iPhone and they have comparable
Speaker 1: battery capacities and you've both run them down to like power,
Speaker 1: you plug your Apple phone into a fast charging Apple
Speaker 1: station and your Google phone into a fast charging Google one,
Speaker 1: you're going to see the iPhone recharge way faster, way earlier. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so that's just how that works. Qualcom Quick Charge
Speaker 1: is another popular fast charging standard and it has several
Speaker 1: generations of that standard. So there's you know, quick Charge
Speaker 1: one point oh, two point oh, three point oh, all
Speaker 1: the way up to five point oh. If you were
Speaker 1: recharging a device with first generation quick Charge, that being
Speaker 1: quick Charge one point oh, you would be limited to
Speaker 1: a maximum of ten watts of power. Quick Charge five
Speaker 1: point oh, by contrast, can deliver one watts or more. However,
Speaker 1: newer versions of quick charger really only found on a
Speaker 1: few devices. Uh so it's you again. You're limited by
Speaker 1: whatever the slowest component is. If that component is your
Speaker 1: actual device, it doesn't matter how good a charger you
Speaker 1: have or what cable you're using, You're going to be
Speaker 1: limited by the max that device allows for. And in
Speaker 1: this case, there just aren't that many devices out there
Speaker 1: with quick Charge five point oh built into them. Quick
Speaker 1: charge really does up the voltage. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: this approach is all about increasing the pressure in the
Speaker 1: system to charge batteries faster. Quick Charge five can allegedly
Speaker 1: charge most phones from zero to capacity in just five minutes. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't have a device that uses quick charge or
Speaker 1: you know, the charging accessories I would need to do this,
Speaker 1: so I can't test it. Myself, but that's what I've read.
Speaker 1: If you go back to quick Charge three point oh
Speaker 1: or earlier, you run into incompatibilities with us B p D.
Speaker 1: But since quick Charge four point oh, quick charge accessories
Speaker 1: work with USB p D accessories, so you can mix
Speaker 1: and match cables and chargers from that point forward. Quick
Speaker 1: Charge also includes circuitry that monitors the batteries temperature, and
Speaker 1: it has automatic thermal balancing. Essentially, that means it's going
Speaker 1: to use whichever charging method is going to keep the
Speaker 1: coolest pathway to the battery to avoid overheating. Next, we've
Speaker 1: got Samsung Adaptive Fast Charging. The latest version of this
Speaker 1: supports max power of up to forty five watts in theory,
Speaker 1: though in practice it appears that Samsung nerves this a
Speaker 1: little bit. It tends to be a little under whatever
Speaker 1: the max would be. Their version is also compatible with
Speaker 1: us B p D, but limited again to forty five watts.
Speaker 1: This fast charging tech is exclusive to Galaxy devices. Then
Speaker 1: you've got mo roll a turbo Power. The most recent
Speaker 1: turbo Power thirty product achieves a max power of twenty
Speaker 1: eight and a half. What's that's built on top of
Speaker 1: Quick Charge three point oh so you can kind of
Speaker 1: think of this as a forked variation of quick charge technology.
Speaker 1: Then you've got one plus warp charge, which is the
Speaker 1: most recent version, supporting a max power of fifty what's
Speaker 1: and the list goes on, and really all of these
Speaker 1: different name brands and numbers gets confusing, and the fact
Speaker 1: that there are so many different competing technologies for fast
Speaker 1: charging means it's really hard to compare apples to apples,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean technology that's coming from Apple in
Speaker 1: this case. If you want to get really really basic,
Speaker 1: you could argue that systems that supply a higher wattage
Speaker 1: to batteries recharge those batteries more quickly. But that is
Speaker 1: being a bit reductive because you have to consider all
Speaker 1: the elements at play here. What are the limitations of
Speaker 1: the accessories? What is the battery capable of accepting? Batteries
Speaker 1: that have special circuitry in them to prevent them from
Speaker 1: being damaged due to overcharging or voltage spikes? Are not
Speaker 1: going to just allow unfettered recharging, So it's not like
Speaker 1: you can just consistently up the wattage and decrease charging times.
Speaker 1: It's not like you could Jerry rig A you know
Speaker 1: five hundred what delivery system, and you recharge your phone
Speaker 1: in a minute and a half, that would just most
Speaker 1: likely lead to overcharging a battery and destroying it, or
Speaker 1: the phone would just shut it down and limit how
Speaker 1: much wattage could actually go to the battery in the
Speaker 1: first place. So the process really has to be controlled
Speaker 1: where else things get really dangerous really quickly. That being said,
Speaker 1: the fact that there are so many different fast charging solutions,
Speaker 1: and the fact that each of these continues to evolve separately,
Speaker 1: means that it's really tricky to talk about fast charging
Speaker 1: at all. If your phone is a couple of years old,
Speaker 1: like mine is, it might be that you're maxed out
Speaker 1: and an older version of whatever fast charge in tech
Speaker 1: applies to your gadget, and that means that you would
Speaker 1: have to upgrade to a newer device if you wanted
Speaker 1: something that charged more quickly. And one other thing I
Speaker 1: should mention. As your technology ages, you might notice that
Speaker 1: it seems to drain battery life faster, that the battery
Speaker 1: just doesn't last as long as it used to. There
Speaker 1: are actually a few different reasons for this, some of
Speaker 1: which play into the concept of planned obsolescence. That's a
Speaker 1: strategy that companies use to create a planned life cycle
Speaker 1: for products, partly in an effort to get you to
Speaker 1: buy the next one of those things. But there are
Speaker 1: some other things that play beyond just corporate strategy, and
Speaker 1: one is that when you buy, say a smartphone, you're
Speaker 1: locked into that hardware. You know, unless you are a
Speaker 1: real d I Y tech head, your phone is pretty
Speaker 1: much gonna stay exactly how it was when you bought it.
Speaker 1: And yet the companies that created the operating systems, you know,
Speaker 1: like Apple and Google, they're gonna keep evolving those systems
Speaker 1: and releasing updates to the operating system them that allow
Speaker 1: for more sophisticated and complicated apps. And these updates might
Speaker 1: place a greater demand on older hardware, hardware that you know,
Speaker 1: wasn't optimized for these newer versions of the operating system,
Speaker 1: and as such, older handsets will see battery life suffer
Speaker 1: because they're not optimized to handle that. In some cases,
Speaker 1: companies will actually throttle processor speeds in an effort to
Speaker 1: offset battery drain. The users tend to hate that too.
Speaker 1: Write there's nothing like finding out the reason your phone
Speaker 1: seems to be slower now is because the company that
Speaker 1: makes your phone made it slower on purpose, Even if
Speaker 1: that purpose was to give you more hours of battery life,
Speaker 1: people hate that. Another reason battery performance declines over time
Speaker 1: is that in the discharge and recharge cycles, there's typically
Speaker 1: some build up of what's called solid electro light interphase.
Speaker 1: This happens as lithium electrons and the electrolyte as well
Speaker 1: as some organic so events react during the recharging phase
Speaker 1: and it creates little build up deposits on the anode
Speaker 1: side of the battery, which effectively locks down some of
Speaker 1: the lithium in the battery. And because that lithium is
Speaker 1: locked down, it means there's less lithium atoms to release electrons,
Speaker 1: so it means your batteries max charge has diminished because
Speaker 1: you don't have as much of the active ingredients if
Speaker 1: you will. In addition, if you fully discharge a lithium
Speaker 1: ion battery, some of that lithium will end up on
Speaker 1: the cobalt side and form lithium oxide. Some of the
Speaker 1: cobalt will form cobalt oxide, and effectively that removes the
Speaker 1: lithium from the process and it locks it in at
Speaker 1: that point, so you have reduced capacity because of that
Speaker 1: as well, So you don't want to drain a lithium
Speaker 1: ion battery all the way down to zero if you
Speaker 1: can help it. Older rechargeable batteries had a similar issue
Speaker 1: called the memory effect. This was prevalent back in the
Speaker 1: nickel cadmium battery days. While it's generally a good idea
Speaker 1: to recharge lithium ion batteries before they drop below say charge,
Speaker 1: in order to avoid those lithium oxide build ups at
Speaker 1: the cathode side, if it's a nickel cadmium battery, it
Speaker 1: was a good idea to actually use them until they
Speaker 1: were fully discharged. So of course that's led to some confusion,
Speaker 1: right Some people are saying, well, should I wait until
Speaker 1: my batteries all the way to zero before I recharge it?
Speaker 1: Or do I wait until it's like at thirty and
Speaker 1: recharge it. Well, with lithium ion, it's better to do
Speaker 1: it and around thirty, but with nickel cadmium you wanted
Speaker 1: to use that battery as much as possible because if
Speaker 1: the batteries were not fully discharged before recharging, you could
Speaker 1: see your battery capacity decrease. This is easier to understand
Speaker 1: with an example So let's say I have an old
Speaker 1: nickel cadmium battery and it's charged up to and I
Speaker 1: run my electric podcast pruner until the battery gets down
Speaker 1: to and then I recharged the battery back up to one. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a chance that my nickel cadmium battery will behave
Speaker 1: as if that charge was actually zero percent, and now
Speaker 1: it will remember is really zero. So instead of having
Speaker 1: a charge, I effectively have a seventy charge because it
Speaker 1: will never go all the way down to zero again,
Speaker 1: and it will get down to twenty five and then
Speaker 1: the battery goes dead as if there were no charge
Speaker 1: left in it. That was a problem with nickel cadmium batteries,
Speaker 1: and it meant that you know, your battery charge would
Speaker 1: severely decrease after a relatively short amount of time. Now,
Speaker 1: as I said, that's not really the case with lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries, which tendency capacity reduce if you do run
Speaker 1: the battery until it dies and then recharge. But even
Speaker 1: if you use best practices, there will come a point
Speaker 1: where a rechargeable battery will just outlive its usefulness. It
Speaker 1: might take thousands and thousands of charge cycles before that happens,
Speaker 1: but it will eventually happen. It's just a good idea
Speaker 1: to practice good behaviors because that helps extend the useful
Speaker 1: life of batteries as much as possible, which is a
Speaker 1: good thing, just to avoid being wasteful. All right, that
Speaker 1: wraps up this episode about batteries and fast recharging. I
Speaker 1: know it's a big mess. I didn't get into too
Speaker 1: much technical detail because really, when you boil it down,
Speaker 1: it does get down to how much wattage do these
Speaker 1: different methods apply to batteries and how fast can batteries
Speaker 1: accept that? And at what point do these systems cut
Speaker 1: off fast recharging to avoid overcharging a battery. That's really
Speaker 1: what it it gets down to when you really dig down.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions, like Perez did, thank you
Speaker 1: again for your suggestion, you can send them to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H