On Thu, 01 Apr 2004 16:01:01 -0600, Bob Robinson wrote:
Offbreed wrote:
Spehro Pefhany wrote:

These days you could just snap 25 or 50 9V batteries together, but I
suppose those folks had more time on their hands and could stack up
metal plates and put them in a jar with electrolyte. shrug


"jars" Plural. More plates in one jar give current.

Nope, depends on how they're connected - plates in series give more
voltage, in parallel, more current...

Every anode in a common electrolyte bath is connected with every
cathode *through the electrolyte*. If you draw this out, you'll see that
if you tried to create muliple series connected cells in a single common
electrolyte, only the end plates would be active in the external circuit,
the others are effectively shorted out by being strapped together in
anode-cathode pairs in between.

That's why there are dividers to isolate the electrolyte between the
cells in a car battery, otherwise it would only output 2 volts instead
of 12 volts, and would get very hot because all the intermediate
anode-cathode pairs are dead shorted by straps.

Because there *are* dividers (think of them as creating individual jars),
the cells aren't in a common electrolyte, and each cell series adds
with the others because the straps are between the anode of one
cell and the cathode of a *different* cell. The battery is thus not
internally shorted, and gives us 12 volts.

Gary