5 ms·

The most interesting thing in my opinion was the fact that 80% of the space was taken by two large batteries. No wonder thae battery is irreplaceable.

jrockway 17y ago
Open the battery door of your phone and you'll see a similar phenomenon. Except that you can replace the battery.
- axod 17y ago
  I'd really love to see some startups working on Battery technology. Batteries don't seem to have improved at all in the last 30 years. They absolutely suck. Surely someone out there can do better :/
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Uh, you don't remember the NiCd and NiMH batteries from a decade ago? I do. Those really sucked.
    - angstrom 17y ago
      But when was the last time you had a device that doubled as a brick?
    - axod 17y ago
      But the advances in battery technology are lame compared to CPU / memory / disk. In the last 30 years, we've gone from having a room full of hard disks storing 32GB, to a memory chip the size of your fingernail storing the same. In that same time period, batteries have improved a little bit. I understand it's a "harder" problem, but it'd really be nice if people were working on it.
      - berntb 17y ago
        >>but it'd really be nice if people were working on it. Are you joking? Consider that electric cars are using similar tech as laptops; there is a lot of battery research. (Google e.g. lithium air, I believe that is the latest great hope for getting rid of the oil dependency...)
        axod 17y ago
        I'm sure a few people are working on it ;) It's just depressing how much batteries suck. Why can't we buy AA batteries that last a month constant usage now? Probably because then we'd buy less batteries, and people are unlikely to buy more expensive batteries. Anyway, some new startups working to shake things up would be cool IMHO.
        Daniel_Newby 17y ago
        50 milliamps for a month is equal to the energy produced by 50 grams of TNT. OK, so not kilotons, but not something you want to carry around either.
        axod 17y ago
        So build some technology to make it ridiculously safe to carry around. Can't be that hard ;)
        jrockway 17y ago
        Current isn't energy, so no.
        Daniel_Newby 17y ago
        In the context of a ~1.5 V AA battery (the grandparent comment's lament), current over time is energy. Regarding internal resistance, the resistance of all materials drops when they get sufficiently hot, and even a volt or two is enough to get an arc going. Once that happens it will spread until the entire battery is converted to plasma. Given the energy densities the other commenter hoped for, the propagation rate is likely to be at the speed of sound, in other words a high-order explosion. Which is not surprising given that such a battery would amount to a stick of dynamite with electrode layers spaced every few molecules.

jrockway 17y ago

Open the battery door of your phone and you'll see a similar phenomenon. Except that you can replace the battery.

axod 17y ago
I'd really love to see some startups working on Battery technology. Batteries don't seem to have improved at all in the last 30 years. They absolutely suck. Surely someone out there can do better :/
- jrockway 17y ago
  Uh, you don't remember the NiCd and NiMH batteries from a decade ago? I do. Those really sucked.
  - angstrom 17y ago
    But when was the last time you had a device that doubled as a brick?
  - axod 17y ago
    But the advances in battery technology are lame compared to CPU / memory / disk. In the last 30 years, we've gone from having a room full of hard disks storing 32GB, to a memory chip the size of your fingernail storing the same. In that same time period, batteries have improved a little bit. I understand it's a "harder" problem, but it'd really be nice if people were working on it.
    - berntb 17y ago
      >>but it'd really be nice if people were working on it. Are you joking? Consider that electric cars are using similar tech as laptops; there is a lot of battery research. (Google e.g. lithium air, I believe that is the latest great hope for getting rid of the oil dependency...)
      - axod 17y ago
        I'm sure a few people are working on it ;) It's just depressing how much batteries suck. Why can't we buy AA batteries that last a month constant usage now? Probably because then we'd buy less batteries, and people are unlikely to buy more expensive batteries. Anyway, some new startups working to shake things up would be cool IMHO.
        Daniel_Newby 17y ago
        50 milliamps for a month is equal to the energy produced by 50 grams of TNT. OK, so not kilotons, but not something you want to carry around either.
        axod 17y ago
        So build some technology to make it ridiculously safe to carry around. Can't be that hard ;)
        jrockway 17y ago
        Current isn't energy, so no.
        Daniel_Newby 17y ago
        In the context of a ~1.5 V AA battery (the grandparent comment's lament), current over time is energy. Regarding internal resistance, the resistance of all materials drops when they get sufficiently hot, and even a volt or two is enough to get an arc going. Once that happens it will spread until the entire battery is converted to plasma. Given the energy densities the other commenter hoped for, the propagation rate is likely to be at the speed of sound, in other words a high-order explosion. Which is not surprising given that such a battery would amount to a stick of dynamite with electrode layers spaced every few molecules.