How do car batteries work?wat chemicals r car batteries made of?
Baterries work because of free electrons. These are electrons that can drift from atom to atom. The car battery consists of plates of two different types of metals, usually zinc and lead. One set of plates is loaded up with free electrons (charging) which then begin to drift to the other set of plates through a liquid called an electrolyte, which in this case is an acid solution. The electrolyte allows electrons to drift in one direction but not the other. When an electron leaves the charged side, it leaves a tiny hole. This process erodes the plate over time which is why a car battery can only be charged so many times before the one set of plates is too eroded to hold a charge anymore.
Batteries are all over the place — in our cars, our PCs, laptops, portable MP3 players and cell phones. A battery is essentially a can full of chemicals that produce electrons. Chemical reactions that produce electrons are called electrochemical reactions. If you look at any battery, you’ll notice that it has two terminals. One terminal is marked (+), or positive, while the other is marked (-), or negative. In a large car battery, there are two heavy lead posts that act as the terminals. Electrons collect on the negative terminal of the battery. If you connect a wire between the negative and positive terminals, the electrons will flow from the negative to the positive terminal as fast as they can (and wear out the battery very quickly — this also tends to be dangerous, especially with large batteries, so it is not something you want to be doing). Normally, you connect some type of load to the battery using the wire. The load might be something like a light bulb, a motor or an electro
