You probably know the feeling. Your phone emits your last "beep" last and is interrupted in the middle of your call. At that time, you may feel more like throwing the drums around the room than singing praises, but drums are a triumph of science.
They allow smartphones and other technologies to exist without anchoring us to an infernal tangle of power cables. However, even the best batteries will decrease daily, slowly losing capacity until they finally run out. So why does this happen and how do our batteries even store so much charge in the first place? It all started in the 1780s with two Italian scientists, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta, and a frog. Legend says that when Galvani was studying a frog's leg, he brushed a metal instrument against one of his nerves, causing the leg muscles to shake. Galvani called this animal electricity, believing that a type of electricity was stored in the same things in life. But Volta disagreed, arguing that it was the metal itself that caused the leg to contract.
The debate was finally resolved with the innovative Volta experiment. He put his idea to the test with a stack of alternating layers of zinc and copper, separated by paper or cloth soaked in a saltwater solution. What happened in the Volta cell is something that chemists now call oxidation and reduction. Zinc oxidizes, which means it loses electrons, which, in turn, are gained by ions in water in a process called reduction, producing hydrogen gas. Volta would have been surprised to learn the latest. He thought the reaction was happening in copper, instead of the solution. However, we honor the discovery of Volta today by naming our standard unit of electrical potential "the volt." This oxidation-reduction cycle creates an electron flow between two substances and if you connect a bulb or a vacuum between the two, it will give you energy.
The debate was finally resolved with the innovative Volta experiment. He put his idea to the test with a stack of alternating layers of zinc and copper, separated by paper or cloth soaked in a saltwater solution. What happened in the Volta cell is something that chemists now call oxidation and reduction. Zinc oxidizes, which means it loses electrons, which, in turn, are gained by ions in water in a process called reduction, producing hydrogen gas. Volta would have been surprised to learn the latest. He thought the reaction was happening in copper, instead of the solution. However, we honor the discovery of Volta today by naming our standard unit of electrical potential "the volt." This oxidation-reduction cycle creates an electron flow between two substances and if you connect a bulb or a vacuum between the two, it will give you energy.
Since the 1700s, scientists have improved the design of Volta. They have replaced the chemical solution with dry cells filled with chemical pulp, but the principle is the same. A metal oxidizes, sending electrons to do a job before they are retained by a substance that is reduced. But any battery has a finite supply of metal, and once most of it oxidizes, the battery runs out. Then, rechargeable batteries give us a temporary solution to this problem by making the oxidation-reduction process reversible. Electrons can flow in the opposite direction with the application of electricity.
Connecting a charger extracts electricity from an outlet that drives the reaction to regenerate the metal, making more electrons available for oxidation the next time you need them. But even rechargeable batteries do not last forever. Over time, the repetition of this process causes imperfections and irregularities in the metal surface that prevents it from oxidizing properly. Electrons are no longer available to flow through a circuit and the battery runs out. Some daily rechargeable batteries will die after only hundreds of discharge-recharge cycles, while newer and more advanced batteries can survive and operate for thousands.
The batteries of the future can be light and thin sheets that work according to the principles of quantum physics and last hundreds of thousands of charge cycles. But until scientists find a way to take advantage of the movement to recharge their cell's battery, as cars do, or place solar panels somewhere on their device, plug the charger into the wall, instead of spending a battery To load another, it is your best option. prevent that fatal "dream"
-Tech duo
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