Dumb newbie question, but because I just learnt about electronic circuit analysis, and I haven't found the answer to this on search engines:
So... You can short circuit a battery. Right? Obvious: Connect the positive to the negative, and the electrons will flow to the positive part, evening the voltage and fucking up your day.
But... Connect the positive end of a battery to the negative end of an IDENTICAL other battery, and do they short circuit between the batteries? Nooo... You're just increasing the voltage! Batteries can stay like that for years in a flashlight, no harm done.
What the fuck sci?
I'm thinking it must have to do with the remaining two ends of the batteries, who aren't welcoming to more of the same charge (positive/negative). Am I close?
In scenario 2 you aren't creating a closed circuit. Why would you expect anything to happen?
>>8060058
because he's an idiot.
>>8060071
I'm not creating a closed circuit between ALL battery poles, no.
But if you accept the fact that the positive and the negative is seperated inside the battery, I am creating a short circuit between the positive of one, and the negative of the other.
Think of it this way:
I have 1 battery. For the sake of simplified argument, let's say the negative reservoir is in the left half, and the positive is in the right half of the battery, or something like that. So it's easy to physically differantiate between anode and cathode.
If I connect the positive pole to the negative pole, with a wire, I short out the battery. This is fact.
Chopping the battery in two before I short circuit it should make no difference, because the negative and positive are isolated from oneanother inside the battery anyway, and some extra air in between them won't change that. It's just a matter of adding extra resistence, when there is already non-conductive material between them inside the battery.
Either way, you have an excess of electrons one place, and a lack of electrons another place, and they will flow to even out and balance this when the two parts are connected. Whether the two parts are contained in the same enclosing or not.
However... If a battery is just a negative and positive part with isolation between them, so I can chop it in two like this... What's to say the two parts have to come from the same battery?
Why can't I connect the negative part of one battery, to the positive part of another battery, to achieve the same short circuit. If the batteries are identical.
It seems to me that is exactly what I would be doing when I stack batteries serially.
I'm not talking about following a loop and using Kirchoffs second law. I know how this is calculated.
I'm asking how come it psycially works that way.
>>8060211
*physically
*bumping for answer*
I've wondered about this too.
>>8060211
Just lulling at this now.
That's not how batteries work moron.
>>8059998
quoted from an able2know thread i found in google
"If there is no circuit, no current will flow. If you put two batteries together, end to end, like in a flashlamp, then the bottom of the first one is "negative" with respect to the top of that same battery. Therefore If you joined them with a wire then current would flow. However the bottom of the first battery is not "negative" with respect to the top of the second battery. There is no "potential difference". Look this term up."
This one is from stackexchange:
"
3
down vote
A battery is effectively an electron pump. Inside the battery a chemical reaction (typically a redox reaction) pumps electrons from the cathode to the anode. If the two ends of the battery aren't connected to anything there's nowhere for the electrons to go and the reaction stops. When you connect the battery to an external circuit the reaction resumes and pumps electrons round the circuit until all the reagents are used up and the battery is used up.
So connecting two batteries in series is just like connecting two pumps in series. If there's nowhere for the electrons to go the pumps halt in both batteries and the batteries just sit there doing nothing."
It helped me understand it a little.
I looked up "Why don't serial batteries drain eachother" (cause when two batteries are end to end, they're connected in series/serial)
>>8060211
>I am creating a short circuit between the positive of one, and the negative of the other.
Yes you are, but "short circuit" does not mean "and therefore current flows."
>>8059998
There's no voltage difference, so even if the connection has a very low resistance
0V / (resistance) = 0 A current.
>>8060936
Aha...
So the battery DOESN'T consist of two parts, each with a different charge. It's NOT like a capacitor.
You're saying that the "electron push" of each battery is caused by a chemical reaction inside of the battery, which is ongoing and actually transports electrons from the positive part of the battery to the negative through the cathode-anode wire inside it while it is in use. And that this chemical reaction will not take place unless it is equally stimulated by opposite flows of electrons in both poles of each and every battery?
Then I just have to figure out why the reaction which frees electrons takes place (since I would immidiately think this was stimulated by a charge difference in the molecules), and why the electrons choose to go the long way 'round instead of just staying in the chamber they started out in. But that's a chemistry question. I guess I have to read up on batteries.
Either way, it's starting to make more sense now. Thanks!
>>8060963
"No voltage difference" was a wtf and an eye opener for me.
>>8061097
>It's NOT like a capacitor
You get the same behavior with a charged capacitor. If you think you can explain it for a battery but not for a capacitor, you don't have the correct explanation for the battery.
>>8061097
>"No voltage difference" was a wtf and an eye opener for me.
Yeah that one took me by surprise as well when I first learned it ~years back.
It is very common to think of a battery as going from 0V to 1.5V, and it is a critical insight to realize that voltage numbers are completely free-floating - you might as well say the battery goes from 1000V to 1001.5V - the important part is that there is a 1.5V difference. Once you see that the numbers are free-floating, it becomes a lot easier to re-imagine two touching batteries not as 1.5V touching 0V but as 1.5V touching the 1.5V pole of a battery that goes from 1.5V to 3V.
Assuming ideal components, once you short-circuit something (like, say, two batteries end-to-end), those two points have the same voltage because that's the meaning of "short-circuit."
>>8061097
>Then I just have to figure out why the reaction which frees electrons takes place
because it is entropically favorable
