What's inside a 9V Battery?

FelineGuitars

We got curious to see what makes one tick.

We had a dead one so we thought we'd take a look.

Wow - who'd have thought it .....six smaller batteries.
Each small batery is 1.5V and when all connected in series they add up to 9V.
Sometimes when a 9V battery goes bad and drives you crazy because your guitar , bass or pedal gets freaky or stops working, it's often because of a single one of the smaller cells going bad.

thermionic

That is the meaning of the word battery of course. It's due to the electrochemistry - the potential difference between the electrodes can only be about 1.5V (in the case of zinc chloride or alkaline batteries). The voltage will always be multiples of 1.5, or 1.2 in the case of NiCds. Some of the cylindrical-shaped ones are a stack of button cells.

I loved taking batteries apart as a kid, I'd read somewhere that you make a microphone from the long carbon electrode.

IanSavage

As @thermionic says, technically each one of those is a 'cell', and the whole lot together forms a 'battery'. Pretty much anything that's only putting out 1.5V is correctly referred to as a 'cell' (D-cell, C-cell etc), and any more than that it's a battery.

This is worth knowing for electronics-types: http://www.instructables.com/id/Get-Six-15V-Cells-from-One-9V-Battery/ 

Bogwhoppit

A little man and his family taking turns to spin a 'hand cranked generator' for little reward. He lives just above the poverty line, with income supplemented by tax credits. Thus, technically (according to the conservatives) is a benefit scrounger. However, he does have a roof over his head, and possibly a pet bunnie for the kids to play with.

Like most people in society who live below the poverty line, when his energy expires, he will be thrown away and replaced

boogieman

thermionic;480260" said:

I loved taking batteries apart as a kid, I'd read somewhere that you make a microphone from the long carbon electrode.

I threw a D size cell on the fire when I was a kid of about 5. This was when batteries were soft zinc cased things with cardboard wrappers. There was a sudden bang as it exploded, it shot out of the fire and stuck to my ankle. The jelly stuff inside was boiling hot. Still got the scar.
(

ToneControl

just found this out this week too, picked up an old 9v from a drawer, and out drop 6 little cells

Danny1969

The ni cad batteries in my drills were always pretty dear when I was in the building game so I used to buy batteries that were on special offer and split em open to use the cells in my drill batteries 

Your laptop battery is the same except worse .... because in a lot of cases once the internal eprom counts so many cycles it will decide the cells are shagged even if they aren't

thermionic

And there's a problem with rechargeable batteries - if one cell goes bad out of say, 6 in series you not only suffer a voltage drop of 1.5V the high internal resistance of the dead cell will prevent current flowing.

 

Thinking about it, I swear I remember taking apart a PP3 in the late 70s and it was constructed as a single cell (one long carbon electrodes). Either I've misremembered it or there was another way of making them then.

ICBM

thermionic said:

Thinking about it, I swear I remember taking apart a PP3 in the late 70s and it was constructed as a single cell (one long carbon electrodes). Either I've misremembered it or there was another way of making them then.

I could also be wrong, but I think old ones were made with six (or seven in the case of Ni-Cds because they only have a 1.2V cell voltage so they use an extra one to get closer to 9V, but still only 8.4V) flat cells stacked, rather than six cylinders parallel.

I remember those old "No. 8" torch batteries which looked like a long cylinder and were literally two (roughly C-size, I think) cells in a cardboard tube! You could take two dead ones apart, find the two cells with a bit of life left in them and make a new battery which would give you a bit more out of them.

Brings back memories of reading things we weren't supposed to have under the bedclothes at night at boarding school .

Bucket

But what's inside one of the smaller 1.5V cells?

ICBM

Bucket said:

But what's inside one of the smaller 1.5V cells?

http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/516/926/540/540926516_971.jpg

CloudNine

Anyone lucky enough to be waiting on a Feline build, now you know why it's taking so long.

Neil

I found that out in the '60's when I hacked apart my first "flying bomb" 9v battery.

FelineGuitars

CloudNine said:

Anyone lucky enough to be waiting on a Feline build, now you know why it's taking so long.

You got a LOL for that ...

Actually did my "science bit" after hours....and posted it on here at 2am

Hootsmon

Ronnie Corbett on a hamster wheel

Hootsmon

FelineGuitars said:

We got curious to see what makes one tick.

We had a dead one so we thought we'd take a look.

Wow - who'd have thought it .....six smaller batteries.
Each small batery is 1.5V and when all connected in series they add up to 9V.
Sometimes when a 9V battery goes bad and drives you crazy because your vibrator gets freaky or stops working, it's often because of a single one of the smaller cells going bad.

sorted