| You are currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and that there are some features you can't use or read. We are an active community of worldwide senior members participating in chat, politics, travel, health, blogging, graphics, computer issues & help, book club, literature & poetry, finance discussions, recipe exchange and much more. Also, as a member you will be able to access member only sections, many features, send personal messages, make new friends, etc. Registration is simple, fast and completely free. Why not register today and become a part of the group. Registration button at the very top left of the page. Thank you for stopping by. Join our community! In case of difficulty, email worldwideseniors.org@gmail.com. If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| Ray-O-Vac | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Aug 23 2012, 11:26 PM (408 Views) | |
| Trotsky | Aug 23 2012, 11:26 PM Post #1 |
|
Big City Boy
|
I bought a very nice flashlight on sale and it either came with Ray-O-Vac batteries or I popped 2 alkaline D-cells (expires DEC 2014) in. The flashlight was strictly for emergencies and I kept it in a bedroom dresser. I tried it recently and the light barely came on. Seems one of the batteries leaked and oozed a corrosive goo and white crystalling glop onto the other corroding it too, an unholy mess. I took them out and washed the inside of the flashlight AND MY HANDS and found that the shiny reflector behind the bulb was mostly eaten away, rendering the flashlight useless. I called Ray-O-Vac and they said "send us the flashlight and batteries and we'll replace them." I DESPISE shipping merchandise so I asked would a couple pictures do. They said fine, so I e-mailed them. Long story short, they responded with a very nice apologetic letter complimenting me on the quality of my photographs and sent me a snazzy new flashlight with 14 new D-cells that cost them $14.90 to SHIP. So Ray-O-Vac gets a nice bouquet from me. (The parent company is REMINGTON: <ak47.gif> <ak47.gif> <ak47.gif> ) Edited by Trotsky, Aug 23 2012, 11:33 PM.
|
|
|
|
| Replies: | |
|---|---|
| campy | Aug 25 2012, 04:13 AM Post #16 |
|
Handyman Extraordinaire
|
But according to what I read Trotsky once you start using the batteries the electrons have started to flow even though they are not flowing at a high rate and can cause corrosion. It has been my experience that batteries in a flashlight tend to corrode more quickly than those outside the flashlight. That's what we were talking about. Is it better to leave the batteries out of the flashlight till they are needed to avoid the chance of corrosion.? Most flashlights have the batteries connected in series. I am not saying the circuit is closed by a switch when the flashlight is not being used just that batteries seem to deteriorate more quickly in the flashlight. |
|
|
|
| wildie | Aug 25 2012, 01:31 PM Post #17 |
|
Veteran Member
|
No one has mentioned the current leakage across free air! This leakage is dependant on the water content of the air and the gap that the leakage must travel. I would suggest that the gap across the switch would be much less due to the proximity of its terminals, whereas battery's randomly stored in a drawer, would have a much greater gap. In either case, I think that the leakage would be more in a humid environment! Its also argued that keeping dry cells in a freezer slows the chemical reaction and slows down the loss of the charge! Edited by wildie, Aug 25 2012, 01:34 PM.
|
|
|
|
| campy | Aug 25 2012, 02:49 PM Post #18 |
|
Handyman Extraordinaire
|
Yes there must be some sort of leakage or they wouldn't have an expiry date would they. An interesting topic. What happened to all the stored energy. Was it converted to ions in the air or heat? |
|
|
|
| Trotsky | Aug 26 2012, 12:26 AM Post #19 |
|
Big City Boy
|
There is always an internal resistance in a battery...tiny circuits that liberate heat internally. Over a long enough time, this slow chemical reaction depletes the battery. All energy is eventually converted to waste heat. That will cause the eventual "entropy death" of the universe as all processes wind down even TIME stops. (But that takes a bit longer than the expiration date of the battery.) |
|
|
|
| campy | Aug 26 2012, 12:37 AM Post #20 |
|
Handyman Extraordinaire
|
Thanks for the explanation. I was waiting for it. The whole universe? Well nothing really disappears it just gets recyled. So what does the universe become? One big black hole ready to explode and start all over again? |
|
|
|
| wildie | Aug 26 2012, 05:54 AM Post #21 |
|
Veteran Member
|
Free air would form a resistive load and current through a resistor gives off its energy with heat! |
|
|
|
| Delphi51 | Aug 26 2012, 03:23 PM Post #22 |
|
Member title
|
Air resistance is surprisingly high. I learned this lesson with a real snap one time. I had a TV on my workbench with the high voltage supply lead to the picture tube disconnected. The picture tube was essentially a capacitor with metal front coating isolated from metal back coating. About 25 000 Volts across the two but fortunately very little charge stored because the two metal "plates" are very far apart. I left it sitting on my bench for a week and figured the charge would be long gone, through the air (many picture tubes have a resistor built in to dissipate the charge in an hour or two). While working on the TV the next weekend I happened to touch the high voltage electrode on the side of the picture tube and what was left of the 25 kv grabbed me and threw me on the floor! I know another interesting thing about LEDs. I put LED lights in our little motorhome, replacing all the house bulbs that drew 0.15 amps instead of 1 amp, producing a somewhat brighter light. I plugged the RV into 120 volt power so I could use my soldering iron. I happened to touch one of the new led lights and was shocked to feel it was hot. When plugged into "shore power" the voltage is about 14.5 Volts instead of 12.5 for battery power. At that voltage the LEDs drew 0.3 amps instead of 0.15 and half the energy went straight into heat. I'm sure that would greatly shorten the LED lifetime. Guys at RV.net told me you have to pay more for your LEDs to get ones that operate well at higher voltages. I found you can buy a "magic" voltage regulator for $3 on ebay that converts anything from 10 to 17 Volts to 12 Volts, up to 2 amps. I bought two but haven't installed them yet because we very rarely plug our RV in anyway. Oh, oh - I feel a physics teacher moment coming. Trotsky might be interested. In a LED the energy of each electron is converted into the energy of one photon, a magic quantum mechanical effect: qV = hc/L , q=electron charge, V=voltage, h=Plank's constant, c=lightspeed, L=wavelength Actually, there should be a "greater than" sign rather than an equal sign because it works as long as you have the minimum voltage necessary for the wavelength the LED is designed for. At that minimum voltage, the thing is astonishingly efficient because it is a quantum effect and all the energy of an electron goes into one photon. But if the voltage is higher than the minimum, you lose energy to heat. To make white light, it has to make blue, green and red photons which have different wavelengths. You have to provide enough voltage to make blue (lowest wavelength) so the part of the LED that makes the other colors (higher wavelength) waste energy. And that is pretty much the only inefficiency. Amazing! I always told my physics students that story and they went on to measure Planck's constant pretty accurately by measuring the minimum voltage needed to light up a LED and its wavelength. A fine high school introduction to quantum mechanics. Edited by Delphi51, Aug 26 2012, 03:31 PM.
|
|
|
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Rants, Bouquets, Consumer Issues · Next Topic » |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2