How do Batteries work?
Batteries are made of cells. Each cell generates around 2 volts. Thus, a 6 volt lead-acid battery has 3 of these cells connected in a series while a 12 volt battery has 6 cells. In addition, a battery contains electrolyte solution which contains 35% sulfuric acid and 65% water solution. Lead plates (cells) are submerged in the electrolyte solution which creates a chemical reaction. When a complete circuit is made the chemical reaction creates a direct current from which electrical energy flows.
Batteries, or dry cells, operate by connecting, through a circuit, a material that wants to donate electrons to another material that lacks electrons. These are called a reducer or reducing agent and an oxidizer or oxidizing agent, respectively. The process is one of many oxidation-reduction reactions that include the rusting of iron and the bleaching of clothing. When an oxidizer and a reducer meet, as in batteries, chemical reactions occur in both and electrons are transferred. The electron transfer creates a direct current (DC). In typical batteries, this is 1.5 volts. One of the first oxidizers to be studied in detail was elemental oxygen. Oxygen gains electrons from other substances such as iron, causing the material to be oxidized. When iron becomes oxidized, it bonds to oxygen molecules to create iron oxide, or rust. Many other oxidizers exist, including bromine, chlorine, and fluorine. In conventional batteries, manganese dioxide powder is used as an oxidizer, turning into mang
A battery is a device that converts chemical energy into electrical energy. Batteries have two electrodes, an anode (the negative end) and a cathode (the positive end). Collectively the anode and the cathode are called the electrodes. What is positve and what is the negative terminal? It would be great to simply say that the anode is negative and the cathode is positive, however, that is not always the case. Somtimes the opposite is true depending on battery technology. In between the battery’s two electrodes runs an electrical current caused primarily from a voltage differential between the anode and cathode. The voltage runs through a chemical called an electrolyte (which can be either liquid or solid). This battery consisting of two electrodes is called a voltaic cell. The first inclination that an electrical path-way from an anode to a cathode within a battery or in this first instance “a frog” occurred in 1786, when Count Luigi Galvani (an Italian anatomist, 1737-1798) found that
Electricity, as you probably already know, is the flow of electrons through a conductive path like a wire. This path is called a circuit. Batteries have three parts, an anode (-), a cathode (+), and the electrolyte. The cathode and anode (the positive and negative sides at either end of a traditional battery) are hooked up to an electrical circuit. The chemical reactions in the battery causes a build up of electrons at the anode. This results in an electrical difference between the anode and the cathode. You can think of this difference as an unstable build-up of the electrons. The electrons wants to rearrange themselves to get rid of this difference. But they do this in a certain way. Electrons repel each other and try to go to a place with fewer electrons. In a battery, the only place to go is to the cathode. But, the electrolyte keeps the electrons from going straight from the anode to the cathode within the battery. When the circuit is closed (a wire connects the cathode and the an
