This topic is interesting if you look at it from a
little different point of view.

	Batteries are nothing more than storage devices for
electrical energy which we get by converting chemical energy in
to electric current.

	All energy storage devices are potentially deadly if
they store enough energy so we are just seeing the effects of
this idea carried in to the realm of battery technology.

	When I got in to electricity as a boy back in the late
fifties, you could short a D cell flashlight battery without
doing much except wasting the battery. If you did that today
with a modern lithium ion or NIMH/NICD battery, you could get a
fire or an explosion.

	Batteries aren't as obvious because they normally light
a flashlight or power a radio just like the carbon-zink cells
did in the fifties. If you had a new set of carbon-zink cells
from the fifties and put them in a boom box or motorized device,
you'd see that device run just fine but it would run down a lot
more quickly than a set of today's energizers so they look and
basically are quite safe as long as you don't short them out
since they will send a lot more amps through something than the
old fifties-era cells.

	Modern cells truly do run our stuff a lot longer but
they store more energy and it's bad if it all tries to get out at
once. In physics, we would say that there are more joules of
energy being released by the modern batteries.

	I can't think of a single energy storage device that
won't hurt or even kill you if it stores a lot of energy and then
releases it in an uncontrolled manner.

	If you've ever had a wind-up device's main spring let
go, it is never pretty. People have actually been killed by the
heavy springs of garage door counter balances when they had them
break or were trying to work on them without thinking through
what to do to be safe.

	Cross bows are nothing more than lots of spring energy
being released at once to shoot the bolt in to some unfortunate
soul who got in the way.

	When inflating truck tires, those big rig wheels come in
3 sections which fit together to make the wheel. Apparently, one
can put them together wrong so that they seem to be okay but can
fly apart with an explosive bang and decapitate someone like the
mechanic who is trying to change the wheel and inflate the tire.

	One shouldn't be scared of modern batteries but they
must be handled with great respect since they hold so much
energy.

	Lithium ion batteries like what we use in radio gear,
power tools and laptops have an added bonus in that the lithium
hydroxide they use as the electrolyte catches fire because it is
a form of alcohol. Just short one of those babies and the inside
heats up which boils the electrolyte producing vapor which
explodes the battery and allows the hot liquid to catch fire
when it meets the air.

	Those exploding laptop batteries that were in the news a
few years ago were thought to have caught fire because metal
debris in the cells finally shorted across the contacts, causing
instant heating, explosion and fire.

	Just some cool things to think about.

Martin WB5agz