Why Lithium Is Dangerous But PERFECT For Batteries

Our chemistry book has a diagram of a battery in the electrochemistry chapter, and I discuss that battery for a bit before explaining to my students that the basics of ACME (anode, cathode, metallic path, electrolyte) hold for every battery but that the engineering of modern lithium-ion batteries is far different from the diagram in the book.

This video - again leaning into the algorithm-rewarded longer and longer format - explains some battery basics involving the activity series, the history of the development of the lithium-ion battery, and the methods of fiery failure when the battery overheats.

This is, as Dr Derek says, a technology that has allowed our modern, battery-dependent world.

Grow Copper Crystals with Electricity

As always, be careful out there, folks. This experiment does involve running electricity through a solution.

This process does seem to result in some really pretty crystals.

And I'll admit that I kind of enjoy the simple, non-mugging style that the Backyard Scientist has gotten away from over time.

The Future Of Energy Storage Beyond Lithium Ion

I've watched enough videos about renewable energy to know that one of the biggest issues with increasing our use of renewables isn't necessarily the actual energy production but rather the storage of the energy from times when it's produced to times when it's needed.

There's lithium ion storage batteries...3:15-4:05...

...flow batteries...4:10-7:50...

...pumped hydroelectric...8:15-8:40...

...energy vault (the most entertaining storage method if you ask me)...8:40-10:15...

...thermal storage...10:20-11:40...

...compressed air...11:50-12:00...

...cryogenic storage...12:00-12:15

Oh, and I absolutely love the joke at 1:28...energy storage methods all have 'serious potential'...

See, because stored energy is potential...it's funny.

Why all solar panels are secretly LEDs (and all LEDs are secretly solar panels)

In the fall of 1995, Professor Arthur B Ellis of UWisconsin came to Wabash College - where I was then a senior chemistry major - and gave a presentation about LEDs. At the time I knew of LEDs as the little red or green light bulbs that were pretty much used as power indicators on electronic devices. I didn't - before his talk - have much of an idea how they worked or how important they would come to be in our world now twenty-five years later.

Coincidentally, Dr Ellis had just written Teaching General Chemistry: a materials science companion, a book that my cooperating teacher bought for me after my student teaching semester later that academic year and that I accidentally re-purchased twenty years or so later. (I realize now that I've told this story on the blog before.)

But I digress...I have come to realize that Dr Ellis's lecture at Wabash really laid out the chemistry of LEDs marvelously well because I watched the above video - showing the LEDs and solar panels are of a kind - and the below video - in which Steve Mould explains the science of LEDs and how they turn electricity into light (and the reverse in solar panels) - and realized that I already knew that information...even down to the P- and N-type semiconductor information.

I've never had a chance to thank Dr Ellis for his lecture, so maybe - if I'm lucky - he'll come across one of these blog posts and realize that he's appreciated.

Piezoelectricity round-up

Clearly piezoelectricity is way more common than I knew.

Sugar crystals? DNA? Bones? All are piezoelectric?

And if piezoelectric crystals lack a center of symmetry (2:20), how the heck is quartz piezoelectric? It looks awfully symmetrical to me.

Apparently, though, the quartz crystal is absolutely piezoelectric, as shown by Bill Hammack, the Engineer Guy...



Theoretically, it's possible to make and test your own piezoelectric crystal at home...(though sadly he uses a commercial piezoelectric crystal to make his guitar pickup)



As to how we can make use to piezoelectrcitiy...

• Top uses of piezoelectricity in everyday applications (inkjet printers, earbuds, tennis racquets, course-changing bullets, humidifiers, sonar, pressure sensors)
• Applications of piezoelectricity (from wikipedia)
• Piezoelectricity and its uses (even explaining how some tennis racquets use piezoelectrcity)

Why a dead alkaline battery bounces!

The simplicity of science - observations, hypotheses, repeatable tests - rears its gorgeous head in this video.

In today's episode of science, an observation is taken that fresh, charged batteries don't bounce. In fancier language, they have a very low coefficient of restitution. Old, discharged batteries, on the other hand, bounce just fine. They have a much higher coefficient of restitution - not like a full one or anything, just higher. Hence our first step: observation.

So the narrator of today's video makes a couple of hypotheses: gas build up (increasing pressure) or gel build up (damping the bounce).

Then we get to the repeatable tests. He builds a nice, little set-up to drop the batteries consistently ensuring that the observations are real and consistent. The set-up gets modified a bit to instead drop a piece of brass onto the different batteries. One hypothesis (the gas build up) finds itself on shaky ground. A further test - drilling into the batteries to allow any pressure to be relieved - fairly well dispells the hypothesis entirely.

So, the narrator cuts the batteries in half (I hope he wore goggles) and sees the change in the discharged batteries. I particularly like the analogy to the dead blow hammer as it relates to the gel-filled, new, un-discharged battery.

How It's Made Aluminum

And so goes the glory of Napoleon's really fancy knives and forks...

This video, from the How It's Made series, shows the process necessary to purify bauxite ore into useful, 'finished' aluminum.

Sadly, though, it is bereft of the corny joke that usually comes at the beginning of the How It's Made videos. I kind of miss the joke. Does that mean I've got Stockholm syndrome at this point?

The Chemical Elements of a Smartphone

I am an admitted smartphone convert. After I was dropped into Salt Lake City needing a Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe's, Office Depot, a bookstore, and a laundromat in the span of a few hours - all of which I found with no problems whatsoever - I don't think I can ever go back to not having the world's knowledge at my fingertips.

Admittedly I wasn't aware of just how many rare earth metals were found in my smartphone, however. Thanks to Compound Interest, now I know.

Compound Interest is a British blog through which Andy Brunning, a chemistry teacher with a flair for graphic design, posts outstanding chemistry-themed infographics.

New Magnetic Material Could Boost Electronics

Some materials are magnetic.

Other materials aren't magnetic.

I've seen non-magnetic items changed into being magnetic.

I've even seen magnetic items changed into being non-magnetic.

The idea of having an item changing back and forth from being magnetic to non-magnetic with a simple temperature change is pretty foreign to my experiences, but that's exactly what Ivan Schuller, of the U of California, San Diego has done.

To quote from the article at bbc.com,

The material combines thin layers of nickel and vanadium oxide, creating a structure that is surprisingly responsive to heat.

"We can control the magnetism in just a narrow range of temperature - without applying a magnetic field. And in principle we could also control it with voltage or current," said Prof Schuller.

"At low temperatures, the oxide is an insulator. At high temperatures it's a metal. And in between it becomes this strange material," he said.

Oh, and that's Dr Schuller there to the right. 

Small in size, big on power: New microbatteries a boost for electronics

Either the Borg are about to assimilate that yellow cube, or we've got a new type of battery on our hands.

The article - from the University of Illinois's news bureau - summarizes research published in the April 16, 2013 issue of the journal Nature Communications under the far more technical title "[h]igh-power lithium ion microbatteries from interdigitated three-dimensional bicontinuous nanoporous electrodes".

 To summarize (enough to whet your whistle)...

With currently available power sources, users have had to choose between power and energy. For applications that need a lot of power, like broadcasting a radio signal over a long distance, capacitors can release energy very quickly but can only store a small amount. For applications that need a lot of energy, like playing a radio for a long time, fuel cells and batteries can hold a lot of energy but release it or recharge slowly.

The new microbatteries offer both power and energy, and by tweaking the structure a bit, the researchers can tune them over a wide range on the power-versus-energy scale.

The batteries owe their high performance to their internal three-dimensional microstructure. Batteries have two key components: the anode (minus side) and cathode (plus side). Building on a novel fast-charging cathode design by materials science and engineering professor Paul Braun’s group, King and Pikul developed a matching anode and then developed a new way to integrate the two components at the microscale to make a complete battery with superior performance.

Maybe supercapicitors aren't the answer after all...

The Super Supercapacitor | Brian Golden Davis

The eureka moment described here feels a whole lot like the moment in Primer where Abe slides the car batteries out of the way. (What do you mean, you haven't seen Primer yet? Close this window and go watch it immediately.)

Batteries work...sort of...

Capacitors - specifically supercapicitors - may, however, just end up being a far more effective means of energy storage, something that we are desperately in need of as we make the - hopeful - shift from fossil fuels to renewables, some of which (solar, wind) are very much problematic in their ability to provide round the clock energy production.

Could capacitors be the solution?

ASARCO - How It's Made: Copper

Aw, man...this video says it's 14:30 long, but the last five minutes is a repeat of the middle five minutes. The real video ends at 9:38.

Getting to that 9:38, though, is some impressive information about the mining and refining of copper.

Rock is exploded and strip mined...leached with sulfuric acid...electrochemically refined...or pulverized...turned into slurry and concentrated...mixed with silica flux and smelted...

The whole video is brilliantly informational, and the green flames - first appearing at 5:14 and reappearing a number of times, most brilliantly at 5:30 - are absolutely stunning.

Heck, the opportunity to see the shimmering, reflective, molten copper at 5:40 alone is worth the price of admission.

The video's original source is the ASARCO website...

http://www.asarco.com/about-us/our-locations/asarco-mineral-discovery-center/making-copper/

...and was uploaded to YouTube so it could be embedded here. The entirety of the ASARCO website has some great information about the copper refining process - images, diagrams, explanation, outstanding stuff. And, yes, the video is mirrored left-to-right, but the process is still shown clearly.

How a lead-acid battery works

Batteries are just so freakin' cool.

I had no idea the specific chemistry inside a lead-acid battery. Lead plus lead oxide making lead sulfate in each case...brilliant.

The comment at 3:00 - "with most engineered objects, there are going to be trade-offs, giving away the characteristics you want to gain others you must have" - is a marvelous summary of much of our design challenges.