Strange Things About Batteries You May Not Know

Sometimes we wonder whether we take life too seriously. Then we remember we always do our best. Because our clients rely on our batteries to provide reliable service, until their ions are exhausted and their time is done. Just for fun, we decided to let our hair down and share some strange things about batteries we found on the internet.

Strange Things About Batteries That May Surprise You

# Smoke detectors are most likely to beep in the early hours of the morning to tell you it is time to change their batteries. This is not a plot to disturb your sleep. Batteries slow down when it is cold, setting off the alarm. Time to change them.

# A bell has been ringing in a room at Oxford University, England since 1840. Nobody knows how it works, or for whom the bell tolls. We have no idea at all how the dry pile batteries lasted so long. Nobody wants to take it apart and find out.

# Scientists believe we could make a battery out of radioactive graphite waste from nuclear power stations, such as blasted out of Chernobyl. We could do even better if we shielded the core with diamonds. The researchers are still waiting for sponsors.

# AAAA batteries do exist, although only in some specialist stores supplying battery-powered computer styluses, laser pointers, and LED penlights. If you run out and need more urgently, the slightly shorter LR61 cells in some nine-volt alkaline batteries could replace them.

# The world’s oldest battery may date from 150 BC to 223 AD, although it mysteriously appeared in the Baghdad Museum in 1936. Priests may have used it in religious ceremonies to cause ‘magic’ sparks when they escorted their kings into temples.

Stranger than fiction, believe-it-or-no these things do exist in the world of batteries. Lead acid ones have been in commercial use since 1886. There is nothing strange about that though. Just simple, reliable technology that recycles raw materials and sees things through.