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Chemistry lesson for the day:
Be careful what you call the cathode and what you call the anode. Oxidation ALWAYS occurs at the Anode, and reduction always occurs at the cathode. The oxidation process results in a chemical losing electrons, and the reduction process results in a chemical gaining electrons. (Mnemonics: "oxidation" and "anode" both start with vowels; "reduction" and "cathode" both start with consonants. "LEO sez GER": Loss of Electrons is Oxidation. Gain of Electrons is Reduction.) In a cell delivering power, the ANODE is the NEGATIVE terminal--the electrons given up in the oxidation chemical reaction come out there. If you re-charge the cell, the roles of anode and cathode are reversed. You feed electrons into the negative terminal, and (with luck) cause a reduction reaction where the chemical at that pole picks up the electrons and is converted back to what it was when the battery was freshly charged. Cheers, Tom Mark Rand wrote: On Sat, 09 Sep 2006 16:11:20 -0400, ken scharf wrote: bart wrote: This evening the GF noticed that the remote control wasn't working & was hot. I pulled out the extremely hot AA batteries. It looks like the spring contact in the remote control, on the negative side had worn away the plastic covering on the side of the battery & shorted the side metal battery casing to the negative contact, thereby causing the overheating. In my many years of battery dissection, I've never seen the side casing of a battery being positive before! These were "Golden Power" alkaline batteries, made in China. They were the original batteries that came with the remote ( for a Shaw digital cable box). Anyone ever seen a positive case AA battery before, or is this a new ( dumb) idea? I've seen many Alkaline batteries with the outside casing connected to the 'tit' on top as the positive and the bottom flat connector was insulated from the body of the battery. alkaline batteries have different chemistry from carbon zinc resulting in an inverted construction. This may actually be the norm, but in the larger sizes the plastic outer wrap hides the details. Just looked at a DuraCell "D" and it is of the inverted construction, but the insulation of the battery bottom (-) terminal from the case of the battery is hidden under the plastic wrapping. Since it's the cathode that gets eaten in whichever reaction is used for the battery type, it might make sense to have the anode as the case. I could have done with this 25 years ago when I got sent abroad for work for three of months and came back to find that the transistor radio batteries had leaked all over one of my (expensive) loudspeakers :-( Mark Rand RTFM |
#2
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On 14 Sep 2006 10:27:20 -0700, "K7ITM" wrote:
Chemistry lesson for the day: Be careful what you call the cathode and what you call the anode. Oxidation ALWAYS occurs at the Anode, and reduction always occurs at the cathode. The oxidation process results in a chemical losing electrons, and the reduction process results in a chemical gaining electrons. (Mnemonics: "oxidation" and "anode" both start with vowels; "reduction" and "cathode" both start with consonants. "LEO sez GER": Loss of Electrons is Oxidation. Gain of Electrons is Reduction.) In a cell delivering power, the ANODE is the NEGATIVE terminal--the electrons given up in the oxidation chemical reaction come out there. If you re-charge the cell, the roles of anode and cathode are reversed. You feed electrons into the negative terminal, and (with luck) cause a reduction reaction where the chemical at that pole picks up the electrons and is converted back to what it was when the battery was freshly charged. Cheers, Tom Guilty as charged (groan). It's just like my account with the bank where debits remove money instead of adding money like they should do :-) Mark Rand RTFM |
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