Mobility Device Batteries
You'll score points around your trivia circle with this one: who came up with the name "battery"? Benjamin Franklin, that's who! He picked that name when observing how a row of Leyden jars resembled a battery of cannons. Leyden jars were then a primitive form of capacitors, which were made to store large amounts of static electricity. The Leyden jar was invented by Pieter van Musschenbroek in 1745.
That wasn't even the first invention of the concept of a battery, however. That goes back to the recently-discovered "Baghdad Battery", which was in use in ancient Mesopotamia. This was a terracotta jar with a copper and iron core, used to electroplate gold onto silver objects.
In today's world of tech gadgets, batteries have come a long way. Nobody could have foreseen that we'd want to take every invention of the Industrial Age and shrink it down to portable, personal size. As a result, we've had to figure out how to get these devices to be efficient enough to run on the least available amount of electricity.
Devices we power with batteries include iPods, GPS devices, digital cameras, portable game consoles, mobile phones, and of course laptop and notebook computers. Though they come in all shapes and sizes, all batteries break down into two classes: primary, which have one charge, and secondary, which are designed to be recharged. However, even though we think of rechargeable batteries as being infinitely usable, they do wear out over time due to dissipation active materials, loss of electrolytes, and internal corrosion.
The disposable kind of batteries typically are made with either zinc-carbon or alkaline. Zinc-carbon ones have a lower energy density, but are just fine for small, simple usage where the demand isn't too high. The alkaline variety have a longer shelf life and can provide higher energy density for more demanding usage. But in either case, both are disposable and should not have attempts made to recharge, as they can rupture or leak.
The rechargeable kind of battery ranges from the lead-acid liquid battery under the hood of your car to the dry cell kind found in your typical mobile phone and laptop computer. These run to nickel-cadmiums, which are the cheapest and weakest, nickel metal hydride, which are in the middle for price and performance, and lithium-ion, which are the most expensive and the longest-lasting.
Disposable batteries may be cheap, but they're also not very efficient. Even if you never take one out of the package, it can still loose anywhere from ten to twenty percent of its charge per year. This is an unavoidable limit of the technology. Disposed batteries are being seen as an environmental hazard in many places, where there's growing concern over electronic waste and hazardous metals.
As for the rechargeable batteries, they typically run down faster than the disposable kind, as much as three percent per day. This again is an unavoidable limitation in battery technology, which is at the mercy of chemistry, after all. Rechargeable batteries have a wide variety of quirks as well, since some kinds of chargers can't tell when the battery is fully charged, some types of batteries are hurt by overcharging or by recharging them when they aren't fully discharged, and so on.
Though we are far from a perfect solution for all mobile powered device needs, the technology makes leaps and bounds every year. Because of the demand for portable electronics, we can be sure that there is a great deal of research done in the industry, always incrementally improving the methods we use. Since none of us are ready to give up our iPod tunes on our subway commutes or our web surfing from our laptops in our backyards, we'll just have to drag the technology along with us wherever we go.
Filed Under: Batteries
