It's amazing how batteries, like the steam engine and the analog computer, were already discovered two millennia ago ... and lead to nothing. I can't but wonder what the history of humankind would have looked like if just one more genius with the right ideas had come along to see these things.
Whenever SciShow updates, I get super giddy and sit down as if to converse with an old traveling friend who always knows the coolest stuff. I just wanna give Hank (and John!) the biggest bromance hug.
I'm loving how after just getting back from my chem class, i'm perfectly keeping up with all of the chemical lingo. It makes me feel so nerdy and badass! I love it.
The title deceived me. When it says, The Big idea that 'Turned on the World', I thought this meant that batteries started to have a negative impact on the world, so I was waiting to hear about how they did - all the way to the end of the video. Anyone else as stupid as me?
My favorite crazy fantasy is to travel through time and show great innovators of the past the amazing fruits of their labors. So, bring Volta to the present and show him the Tesla Model S. There would be much to explain, but to show someone like him the wondrous consequences of his efforts would just fill me with joy. Back here in reality, the thought experiment still makes me happy.
There's a Doctor Who episode where he brings Van Gogh to the present day to show him how his works have affected people and are on display in an art museum. The best part is he's mingling about amongst his own works and people don't even recognize him. It's remains one of my favorite episodes. :)
laserfloyd I haven't seen that, but I will. It's just wonderful to imagine seeing a great artist enjoying watching people appreciate his art. That is exactly the idea of my fantasy situation. It expands my idea into art appreciation... thanks for that.
I would give them a book off all their life work, while they are still 20 years old,.. so they can save time, and discover MORE..... orrrrrr..... collect a metric ton of the most importante technologies and breaktrough and give it to 4000 years old Greeks and Chineses geniuses, so they can speed stuff up. And probably modern weaponery so they can slaugter those who oppose progress.... yeah,... I should perhaps check myself...
laserfloyd Hey, just about 8 months later, I finally checked out that scene and that episode because someone thumbed up a comment and I looked for it. Anyway, thanks for that... really wonderful stuff.
I saw the title and got confused. I though "Then did batteries turn on the world? I haven't seen anything anywhere about batteries having negative consequences" And quickly realized it might also mean activate, then felt embarrassed.
Mr.chang cooler Wondered the same thing. And didn't realize anything at all. Instead I went to the comments to look for an explanation. And here it is. xD
+Mr.chang cooler I think it would have been more correct if "on" finished the sentence, since in this case it makes on look like it's part of a prepositional phrase. It's not you it's bad wording. (Not only is ending a sentence with a preposition fine, on in this sentence is a particle, not a preposition.)
Tearith1 Well, it says it can last up to 10x longer, so even if it degraded faster after each charge, it would still outlive and outperform lithium-ion. Here is the link to the article. cleantechnica.com/2013/10/30/copper-foam-batteries-increased-energy-storage-faster-charge-times-decreased-production-costs/
Important fact you forgot to mention: They have a significantly higher energy density. Let's hope they can achieve what they promise and they make it to the market quickly. Mobile devices in particular are really hurting for a better battery technology.
I'm calling bullshit early on this "copper foam". They're just hunting for funding. "We will have a prototype within the year". That statement alone says they've got nothing, but need money to see if something saleable can come out of the research. If they do manage to get a product to market, you can feel free to look me up and give me and "I told ya so", but for now, I'm not holding my breath.
My teacher showed this video in class and I nearly freaked out. I was just like "OH MY GOD ITS HANK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Needless to say everyone was looking at me like I had two heads...
Hey Hank, it is very common to mix up the electrode names (i do all the time :)) and i think you did so. Correct me if I'm wrong but it should be like that: cathode is the electron supplier electrode (where reduction occurs) and therefore is given the negative sign and vice versa.
Maybe it was a misunderstanding based on the different definitions for the "technical flow direction" and the "physical flow direction", they are opposing. (Don't know if those are the proper English terms, in German it is "Technische Stromrichtung" and "Physikalische Stromrichtung".)
I wish more SciShow episodes were this long. I enjoy them and 4 minutes is not enough... slot of information in a 15-20 minute video would be much better
You do know your car, once started runs off the alternator and not the battery unless something is wrong with the alternator.?.? The battery is in the system but is really being recharged (except possibly at idle when voltage from a weak alt. may drop below 12ish). That's why jump starting an old battery works. The other vehicles battery and charging system provide the old battery enough extra boost to allow the car to start. But (unless you drained the battery by leaving the lights on or something similar) your car will run just fine but won't start the next time either.
If you leave the lights on and come back and the car just doesn't start you can turn everything off and wait for 30 minutes and it will allow the battery to recover, then it may start. This trick has saved me on more than one occasion.
It's generally agreed by archaeologists that the "Baghdad battery" was not a battery. The most glaring problem is that it had no way to make a circuit, the copper assumed to be the "cathode" was fully inside the container with no way of being reached to complete the circuit. There are also no artifacts from the period that were electroplated (plenty of fire-gilded, but that doesn't involve electric current) and the current would be to weak if it were used with contemporary substances proposed as the "electrolyte". Aside from the alleged "anode" and "cathode", the jar otherwise matched others used to store scrolls and a decaying scroll may be responsible for the weakly acidic residue found inside.
You could have added another 90 seconds to talk about the more types of batteries. Some are interesting, some are amazing... Molten salt batteries Zink Air batteries "Reserve Batteries" like water cells The aluminum family batteries "Super-Iron" Batteries All are just as interesting than the basic AAs you showed...
Considering my previous comment, you should do a piece on electric vehicles. The Volt has some of the greatest engineering feats of any car this millennium and the Tesla is becoming the Apple of the Auto industry right now with its premier model S.
I've done some research on rechargable batteries for a solar project not too long ago, and the way I see it, NiFe batteries are best suited for this purpose. They do lose some rechargeability with every cycle (some .01%), and they have quite a spontaneous discharge rate (40%/month), but they will work for up to a hundred years and they are pretty much immune to overcharge damage
Do an IDTIMWYTIM on the word battery? The common term "battery" used to refer to things like the AA, AAA, C, etc types of batteries aren't actually batteries. They're just individual electrochemical cells where the word "battery" is actually used to describe an array of individual electrochemical cells connected together.
I had hoped to hear something about some other types of batteries (well, technically not batteries, but I don't know what to call them). For example, a few years back, there was a lot of talk about nano scale capacitors and how such a technology could potentially change the future of energy storage. It seemed very promising, to me at least, but apparently not so, and I'd like to know why. There has also been talk about some liquid metal batteries or something similar. Not as interesting if you ask me, but it would be worth including if you ask me. Personally I think, as do many others I'm sure, that energy storage is one of a select few technologies that could really change the world as we know it, provided that we experience that "quantum leap". Well, I'm done ranting. Have a nice one.
thats what happens to 99.6% of lead acid car batteries. thats why you are charged an extra 7$ when you buy a new one. you gotta bring your old one back to get that 7$ back. thats called a core charge.
Ah, the Baghdad Battery, the pseudo-scientist's Viagra. The conspiracy theorist's dirty movie. Whatever turns them on, I suppose, but the archaeologist explanation of gold plating seems more plausible than space aliens and multi-millennium cover-ups.
James Smart Actually, if you ever see videos of lithium batteries ruptering or failing, they tend to catch on fire and even EXPLODE! All it'd take is a few batteries on a plane exploding to bring it down
Emx2000 Not all batteries, sometimes things fail catastrophically and blow up, once you expose li-ions or li-pols to air it'll violently combust and exblode
For a follow-up, you could do a video on how the same principles are used to prevent corrosion. Sacrificial anodes and preventive charges, for example.
7:13 Holy hell, Hank! What on earth is this? Where did you get the sources from, the RU-vid comments section, Top Gear? No, they don't just last 5 years. That just doesn't happen. Hybrids as taxi fleets in LA to Dublin clock up many miles, up to 300,000 miles without any battery defect, of which can be found in second hand markets. Pretty much every manufacturer warranties the batteries for 8 years, some more. That's based off laboratory testing of cells where a small individual cell is recharged and discharged rapidly in various conditions to simulate a full life of a car, +8 years. Constantly rapidly recharging and discharging by recreating 8 years of use in less than a month or 2 is obviously not too good for a single Li-ion cell, making its 8 year warranty rather conservative. Surely, mass produced electric cars have only been on the road since 2010, there's really no way to tell what would actually happen in the long run other than to wait, but hybrids have and can. Even when the battery "quits" suddenly as many fear and point for Hybrids and EVs, there are only a few instances, but that doesn't mean a big useless battery is guaranteed! There are a few videos to show why and how to fix smaller hybrid batteries at least. It's usually due to a single cell or module among many in a battery that became weak, producing less volts than the rest. For an automotive battery to work, each module must produce similar amount of volts to work (In a Prius, it's 7.6 volts, but a "failed" battery may have one or two modules with 6 volts). A single module for a hybrid battery can cost $40 on ebay or $250 for the whole battery from the scrapyard. For an electric car, it's unknown at this stage because they're new, but it won't be an outright replacement of $10,000! That is nothing more than rumours from worries! Even so, 8 years down the line batteries will be cheaper. At this pioneering rate, li-ion's price decreases by 8% per year. I was rather surprised at this. Not only did I knew and predicted what Hank was going to say in this video, weird right? But gobsmacked when hearing these rumours usually used against electric cars at 07:13. They have been around since 2004, that's the first time I heard of them! It's just because they're new. It's easy to pick on what's new. I'm sure John might disagree. That was upsetting though.
Hank's really into eco friendly things so I doubt he was purposely trying to pick on hybrid cars. He just got bad info. But I'm glad you have corrected him!
You cannot extrapolate from hybrids to full EVs. The current Prius had a 1.4 kWh battery which has a range of a few miles. The operation of such a battery (frequent charging and discharging within a narrow depth of discharge range) means the battery can do far more cycles than a battery pack in a full EV, where you expect to be able to use the full range in one go. Hybrids can also just bypass the battery altogether under high power conditions if needs be (e.g. accelerating, going up a hill). It is not unreasonable to suggest therefore that a battery pack for a full EV may not hold an acceptable charge after 5 years, especially for EVs with smaller battery packs. As for the cost - the difference between the Tesla Model S base models with 60 or 85 kWh battery packs is about $10,000. The Nissan Leaf, as an example has a 24 kWh battery pack, so $10,000 would seem reasonable. That also works out as about $415/kWh which is maybe even on the cheap side for today.
Ok, you didn't even mention Ultra/Super capacitors and Capacitor/Lithium hybrids. Every geek that watches you is now very disappointed. You MUST do an entire show on them.
+Genesis RC lithium ion is a lithium atom missing a electron or or additional electron. a lithium polymer is a substance which has many chains of lithium bonded in it.
Hey Hank, with such an in depth subject it would really be nice to see more animations showing the process you are talking about... it would help the understanding of many people including myself :)
One of the most wonderful developments in battery technology is the largely immobile recent developments in grid-level storage, I was surprised they didn't come up in this video. Ambri is a company producing them, and these developments could allow for renewable sources to be used for our energy supply even when they otherwise couldn't be harvesting that energy. (Store your sunlight, for use overnight, in this wonderful super-hot battery.)
Hank, you should do a video on computer's structure for noobs. I read how a CPU or a chipset or a monitor is made, and its really cool! Also... urray lythium!
***** But they perform similar functions, so I don't see any reason to get bogged down in semantics. Rose by any other name and all that. Batteries are just modes of energy storage, and that's how people see them. This episode in particular made a point in highlighting how the basic technology for batteries hasn't really changed in 2,000 years, so in regards to that conversation nanocapacitors could be considered "the next battery" Batteries will be phased out eventually by newer advances. Graphene Supercapacitors are already poised to be that next leap. I'd say that's fairly relevant.
Side note for battery notation: mAh stands for milliamp-hours, and represents the amount of energy the battery can make available. A 500mAh battery can run a 500mA device for 1 hour, a 250mA device for 2 hours, or a 1A device for 30 min. Knowing how much different types of batteries can store will make a difference if you want the extra time between charges!
side note for your side note, car batteries tend to have their amp-hour ratings in their model number. like a 12CR55NM battery would prolly be 12v 55ah. the reason why the AH rating for car batteries isn't on their front label is they are build for maximum amps to start the engine instead of providing long discharges. thats why they tell the Cold Cranking Amps instead.
You guys should do a show about graphene because that stuff is the future! And also it would be a nice replacement to lithium ion due to its super capacitor capabilities.
Battery tech has stalled since the Li-ion discovery... apart from refining the Li-ion tech, currently there is no known better material that is stable enough.
Well your all entailed to your 'personal opinions' but I prefer to keep it scientific. www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/are-expensive-batteries-worth-the-extra-cost/
Why fatal? I am confused. Why you would pick apart a simple youtube video comment, then use a massive overstatment that is calling the use of a logical fallacy as "the fatal error". One can use a logical fallacy and still be correct. Please don't flatter yourself as to my support of your claims. I would have posted as much even if you had not.
Why so serious? I take it no body see the comical value of buying battery's that are so bad there All ready dead? you guys need to laugh some time its good for you.
Great episode hank wish you had explained battery memory more Which is why some rechargeable batteries especially NiCad batteries will stop recharginf if don't run the battery completely down before recahrging.
The solution is already here. www.technologyreview.com/view/521651/graphene-supercapacitors-ready-for-electric-vehicle-energy-storage-say-korean-engineers/
Yes these supercapacitors are so efficient that people have been able to make small machines that run for weeks before slowing down, its not perpetual motion but its close enough.
MrGridStrom No company making batteries of any kind ever made a claim of perpetual motion. WTF are you talking about? Perpetual motion is a concept, not mathematically viable as the laws of thermal dynamics prevent it.
Alessandro Baccini the definition applies to things like a rechargeable battery, where you cannot identify the anode and cathode until you see how the device is being operated
No, they got it right. Oxidation occurs on the anode. In a discharging battery or galvanic cell, the anode is located on the negative terminal. In a recharging battery or an electrolytic cell, the anode is located on the positive terminal, Because the process is reversed.
There are of course two different kinds of Lead-Acid batteries. The kind that start your car will run down quickly and be damaged if you were to discharge them all the way - but they put out a huge amount of current. The other kind, or "Deep Cycle" batteries, can be charged and discharged without harm, until they reach the end of their useful life. There are deep-cycle lead acid batteries in use today that weigh upwards of 3,300 pounds (1,400 kilograms), mostly the 36v or 48v behemoths used in electric forklift trucks.
This was a very informative video. One question I was hoping to hear was why older rechargeable batteries had a memory and had to be completely drained before recharging?
Before you all jump on Hank about all he could have talked about, remember the 8mn time constraint and wide audience. I m sure he had to cut a ton of ideas out of his vids. That being said, the future of batteries research is the key to the viability of societies long term, so i'd love for Hank to push this topic further.
I have a 30,000 mAh powerbank, its lithium, I love it, I can charge 3 devices at the same time and it has a tiny screen with a percentage of battery on it, wasn't very expensive either, love it.
Good video, I think you should talk about the future of batteries though. I can recall reading at least one article about some "amazing" battery breakthroughs this year.
Nice video, but one minor error. Once your car's engine is running, the battery does not "ration out extra energy to run your radio and lights and AC and ipod". It is just being recharged by the alternator. The open circuit battery voltage is around 12 the alternator puts out around 14, so current flows into the battery. If the alternator fails, your battery can run all those things, but for a limited amount of time.
Can you do a quick video about Graphene super capacitors? I saw a brief video about it on another channel, and I would love to see you guys take a look at it.
hank, i've been watching your channel here from the start, and this subject here is particularly intriguing to me as an engineer myself....with that said, what are your thoughts on the newly discovered/invented carbon power cells that recharge in seconds and can hold much, much more power in a much, much smaller space? i know the technology is very new and i've only read one article on it...but figured it would be something great for you to touch on to add to this particular topic.
Now you mentioned that you would talk about the future of batteries but I did see you touch on that. I would be interested in what they are experimenting with now and where the battery industry will head next. It seems like it will have to be something completely new
I missed a part about the future of rechargeable energy storage lying in the theoretical graphene-"batterys". These little guys would have a lot of improvements in comparison to the electrochemical battery. The energy per weight ratio is at least a dozen times better than the best of possible Li-Ion batteries. They can be charged within seconds, caused by the fact that they store energy directly without the time needed by a chemical reaction. They will be super cheap in production because u need nothing but simple graphite, and they are capable of an practically infinite number of recharging cycles without any loss of efficiency.
For the info, in the led-acid battery, there is a 30% Hydrochloric acid (HCl), now when it's working, it produces water (H2O), because of this the acid level drops, and if it goes under 20%, you aren't able to charge it again.
Lead acid batteries are often underrated due to them being made of poor quality lead antimony. This keeps cost down and ensures battery companies don't go broke because you have to replace them every few years simply because the plates disintegrate. If made from thick quality lead plates they can last well past 30 years as long as they are maintained properly. I have heard of power sub stations still using battery banks installed almost 50 years ago. Good lead acid batteries will survive severe overcharging , boiling due to rapid discharge and as long as the plates are not physically damaged can be revived with pulse chargers and chemical treatments that remove excessive sulpher build up within the lead plates. The worlds fastest street legal road car "the white zombie" (it is electric) is powered by lead acid batteries because they are the only thing that can handle the huge voltage dump and extreme temperature created within the batteries at full throttle. (mind you it has a pretty limited range though)
