Sorry for the OT post but I have a question that has been bugging me for
several years and as my understanding of elctricity and all it nuances is
only slightly better than the 80 year-old neighbor back home who declined
elctricity in her home 'cause she didn't want hot wires in her walls, I ask
here.

It has to do with batteries and hooking them up in parallel or series. Now
I haven't the foggiest as to which is which but ...


Please pardon pathetic ASCII art.
In both cases you have 3 batteries. Let's asusme they are all AA 1.5
volts. (That's what is says on the label)

Case 1. The batteries are hooked up as below:

________ ________ _______
+________- +________- +_______-
battery 1 battery 2 battery 3

The wires (or whatever) are hooked to the + of battery 1 and the - of batter
3. This is a standard type of layout for a flashlight.

What is the difference betwixt this type of layout and

Case 2

+ + +
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
- - -

where the + of all the batteries are connected and the negatives of all the
batteries are connected.

Thanks a bunch