Finding if There’s Juice Left in a Battery

By Anupum Pant

It’s hard to tell a dead battery from a good one. Or is it? Like you can find out if an egg is spoiled by dropping it in water, a bad battery can be spotted by simply dropping on a hard surface. If a battery bounces more and fails to stand up, it certainly is a bad one. But if it doesn’t bounce as much and stands up on the hard surface, if dropped from a small height, it is a good one. But how does this really work. Or does it?

Yes, it sure is a good test to find your bad alkaline batteries. According to a popular theory, this works because gas gets collected inside a battery which makes it pressurized, so it starts bouncing more as the juice goes out. This has been tested, and not found to be true.

Instead, what makes this work is pretty different from that theory. In a good battery, the inner part of it is very mushy – or, not firm. That is mostly due to the presence of Manganese dioxide, which is added to prevent the gas from collecting inside a battery. So, this mushy matter inside it contributes to an anti bounce mechanism.

As the juice gets used up, the manganese dioxide changes to a more firmer manganese oxide, and a relatively hard core is left inside a finished battery. So, when it is dropped, it bounces more than the battery that has mushy stuff inside it.

The following video tests it –

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