Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Batteries arrangement



Hmm.... Everyone knows that when we connect batteries together, it has to be the positive pole connected to the negative pole. So how about connecting it as in the circuit I drawn? 3 batteries is connected correctly but the fourth batteries is connect opposite. This can works (see my photo on the right). I have check the voltage across the batteries using a multitester. It shows that the voltage is 3V. I used a 1.5V batteries so 4 batteries why is only 3V and not 6V?
I tried with a lot of arrangment and come out with this conclusion. You have to add up the number of batteries that point to the same direction minus away the batteries voltage that is pointing at another direction. So in my case I have 3 batteries with positive pointing to the left and 1 battery pointing to the right. So it will be (3x1.5V) - 1.5V=3V. Therefore my bulb will still light up as there is still 3V of voltage passing through it.
However when we only have 2 batteries, both pointing at different direction, there will not be voltage passing through. You can see the reading from my multitester. Although it shows 0.02V but that is because one of my battery is 0.02V stronger than another.
So you may wonder how can it be? I ever tried to disarrange the batteries in a torchlight which need 3 batteries so it should have 1.5V but it never light up? This is because the bulb need more voltage to pass through for it to light up that why they manufacture it to use 3 batteries (If not they can only make it to use only 1 battery like that even lighter). Is not because there is no voltage passing through then no light come out. So hope you understand the concept now.

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