How Long Batteries Last By: Brad

My KIC topic is batteries and which battery lasts the longest. I chose batteries as my KIC topic because I'm interested in electricity. Also, in 1998, Tim and Justin did an experiment with batteries and used some of the same batteries, so I'm wondering if my results will be the same or not.

I have one question about batteries. That question is: out of three different kinds of batteries, which battery lasts longest in lighting a 2.47 voltage light bulb? My batteries are the Duracell C Heavy Duty Alkaline, Energizer C Heavy Duty Alkaline, and the RayoVac C Maximum Heavy Duty Alcaline. I decided on this question when reading a previous KIC article by Tim and Justin that was similar.

Batteries were invented over two hundred years ago. They were invented by an Italian named Alessandro Volta (1746-1827) in 1795. The volt or voltage comes from Alessandro's last name. His battery had magnesium dioxide, aluminum chloride, water, zinc, silver plates, paper, cloth and salt water in it. The way the battery works is the electricity comes from the negative end of the battery. Then it travels through the wires to the object it is powering back through the wires to the positive end. This is ail in a split second. Batteries now are made of manganese oxide, carton, the absorbent seperator, steel casing, a steel nail in the middle of the battery, powdered zinc and electrolytes.

The first thing I did to answer my question was I drilled three battery holders onto a piece of wood. Then I drilled the sockets for the light bulbs on. Finally, I connected the wires from the battery holders to the sockets. At last I put my batteries and light bubs in. I did this test with a kind of light bulb that didn't work well. So I tried the experiment with a 2.47 V light bulb instead of a 1.2 V and I succeeded, I watched my test very carefully to determine correctly which battery lasts longer. I kept a table of my data.

The Energizer Heavy Duty Alkaline battery C with a freshness date of Jan 2002 came in last with 30 hours and 3 minutes. Second place was the RayoVac Heavy Duty Maximum Alcaline C with a freshness date of July 2004. RayoVac lasted 31 hours and 23 minutes. With the gold was Duracell Heavy Duty Alkaline battery which had the worst freshness date of January 2001. Duraceil lasted 33 hours and 55 minutes. This proves that Duracell is definitely a better C battery.

An inprovement on this experiment for a future student would be to make sure you have bulbs that don't burn out right away. Plus you should use bulbs that are the right kind for that battery. Also you should keep careful results unlike I did on the first test. Finally you should use a bigger light bulb and do things right the first time. Research on batteries was partially difficult but very interesting and fun!

Once again the copper top beats the pink bunny that boasted he could keep going and going.

Bibliography

Macauliay, David. The Way Things Work. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1998. . //www.mywebplace.com/batfaq.html. April17,2000. Justin. "Batteries." KIC Journal, 1998. Tim. "Batteries." KIC Journal, 1998.