Category: flashlights

How can you make an electromagnet from a battery and copper wire?

You’ll need a large steel nail or bolt, too. Wrap about 100 turns of copper wire around the nail, keeping the turns fairly uniformly spaced. Make sure that both ends of the wire coil, start and finish, project out from the windings. When you’re done winding the coil, strip off about 1 cm of the insulation from each end of the wire. Now connect one end of the wire to the positive terminal of a AA alkaline battery and the other end of the wire to the negative terminal of that battery. The nail will become a strong magnet and will be able to pick up other nails or paper clips with ease. Electricity will also heat the wire, so be prepared for the electromagnet to become uncomfortably hot. Detach the wires from the battery when you’re no longer able to hold everything safely.

How does a battery work? How many different kinds of batteries are there? – BW

Batteries use chemical reactions to move electric charges from one terminal to another. A chemical reaction is a process that rearranges molecules—you begin with a certain collection of molecules and end up with a different collection of molecules. As the atoms in those molecules rearrange, they stick to one another more tightly than before and they release some of their chemical potential energy. This released energy then takes another form. While some chemical reactions such as burning will turn this released energy into thermal energy, a battery uses this released energy to move electric charges from one place to another. The battery moves extra positive charges onto its positive terminal and extra negative charges onto its negative terminal. While you can’t see those charges, you can tell that they’re there. If you use wires to connect the terminals to the two sides of a light bulb, the charges will rush through the wires and the light bulb will glow.

There are many types of batteries, but two of the most important modern batteries are alkaline batteries (used in flashlights and toys) and lead-acid batteries (used in automobiles). An alkaline battery uses a reaction between zinc metal and manganese dioxide to move electric charges between its two terminals. The battery’s negative terminal is made of powdered zinc and its positive terminal is surrounded by manganese dioxide. Between the two terminals is an alkaline paste of potassium hydroxide. As the chemical reaction proceeds, negative charges are transferred to the battery’s negative terminal and positive charges are transferred to the battery’s positive terminal. As these charges are used by the flashlight or toy, the battery replaces them with new charges. Since each transfer of charges consumes some of the battery’s original chemicals, the more the battery’s charges are used, the more its chemicals are consumed. Eventually the powdered zinc is gone and the battery stops working. Once the powdered zinc has been used up, it can’t be replaced.

A lead-acid battery uses a reaction between lead metal, lead oxide, and sulfuric acid to move electric charges. It, too, consumes its original chemicals while transferring charges. However, a lead-acid battery can be recharged easily by pushing charges through it backward. When a car is running, its generator pushes charges backward through the lead-acid battery and converts the consumed chemicals back into their original forms. This recharged battery is almost as good as new, so it can be used over and over again and lasts for several years.

What happens when a battery dies?

A battery uses its chemical potential energy to pump electric charges from its negative terminal to its positive terminal. Eventually it runs out of chemical potential energy. In an alkaline battery, the chemical potential energy is mostly contained in zinc powder and this powder oxidizes as the battery operates; in effect, it burns up in a very controlled manner. By the time the battery is dead, there just isn’t much pure zinc metal left.

How can a battery lose energy when it’s not being used (like when it sits in a flashlight that’s not turned on for months or years)?

The battery maintains a steady positive charge on its positive terminal and a negative charge on its negative terminal, month after month. These opposite charges attract one another and they do manage to get back together occasionally. They usually travel right through the battery itself, assisted by thermal energy. When that happens, the battery has to pump additional charge from the negative terminal to the positive terminal to make up for the lost charge and consumes a little more of its chemical potential energy. You can slow down this aging process by refrigerating the batteries. With less thermal energy available, the accidental movements of charge through the battery become less frequent.

How do collisions with tungsten atoms in the filament of a flashlight convert the current’s electrostatic and kinetic energies into thermal energy?

When the electrons moving through the tungsten filament collide with the tungsten atoms, they do work on those tungsten atoms. Although the atoms are very massive and the electrons bounce off of them like Ping-Pong balls from bowling balls, the atoms do jiggle about after being struck. Bombarded by a steady stream of electrons, the atoms in the tungsten begin to vibrate harder and harder and soon become white hot. The electrons leave the tungsten filament with relatively little energy left-they use almost all of their kinetic and electrostatic potential energies to get through this gauntlet of tungsten atoms.

If you keep batteries in your car-where it gets really hot on a summer day-will the batteries “die” faster? (I got brand new batteries and have them in a flashlight in my car and they are almost dead, yet I never really used the flashlight but for a couple of minute.)

Yes. Thermal energy spoils everything and the hotter you heat an object, the more thermal energy it contains. Keeping batteries or photographic film cool preserves them against aging.

What exactly are fuses and why do people change them or blame them if something short circuits?

A fuse is a weak link inserted into a circuit to break the circuit if too much current flows through it. The electric resistance of the fuse is large so that the current deposits a fair amount of thermal energy into it as it passes through. When the current exceeds the designated amount, the fuse melts and burns out. A short circuit usually blows out the fuse because it causes an enormous increase in the current flowing through the circuit. When that happens in your house, you should be thankful for the fuse because it saved you from the fire that might occur if it weren’t there. You sure don’t want the wires in your wall to melt and burn out because they might take the whole building with them. A circuit breaker is just an electromagnetic variation on the fuse. As the current through the circuit break increases, an electromagnet inside the circuit breaker becomes stronger and stronger until it eventually flips a switch that opens the circuit.