Series Batteries
Most recent answer: 10/22/2007
- Sretko (age 21)
university of toronto, canada
Think of it this way. The battery is a sort of pump which uses chemical energy to give a push to electrons, pushing them toward the negative terminal. If you connect one negative terminal to the next positive terminal, the second battery will give the electrons a further push in the same direction.
Mike W.
Just putting the ends of two batteries together is insufficient to make a circuit, short or otherwise. In a circuit, current needs to travel around in a loop. You certainly can make a short circuit if you connect a wire (without a light bulb) from the positive end of your two-battery series combination back around to the negative end of the other battery. The voltages of the two batteries add in series, but the wire, since it conducts electricity with little resistance, forces the voltages of the two ends to be the same.
Tom
(published on 10/22/2007)
Follow-Up #1: further remarks on series batteries
- Mehran
Miami
Mike W.
(published on 10/22/2007)
Follow-Up #2: electron flow in battery
- Bradley Muehlemann (age 35)
Colfax, IA, USA
Outside the battery, you're absolutely right that electrons flow from the neagtve terminal to the positive one, through some sort of circuit.
But think of what that means. Electrons don't just pile up somewhere. Somehow inside the battery something must be pushing them from the positive terminal to the negative terminal. That sounds backwards, since as you say that's where they have higher electrical potential. So how does it work?
The idea is that elctrons flow to where their total electrochemical potential is lowest, not just their plain electrical potential. The electrochemical potential involves the detailed binding of electrons to atoms and molecules, so it depends on chemistry. In any battery, the chemistry is different on the two sides.
You can see an example of the elctrochemical potential in very simple chemisrty, the way table salt dissolves in water. It forms Na+ and Cl- ions. Why does the last electron jon the Cl? Shouldn't it get pulled back to the Na+? It doesn't because of the detailed quantum states available on those two ions.
Mike W.
(published on 08/26/2020)