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At Oxford, a Battery That's Lasted 175 Years -- So Far
sarahnaomi writes There sits, in the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University, a bell that has been ringing, nonstop, for at least 175 years. It's powered by a single battery that was installed in 1840. Researchers would love to know what the battery is made of, but they are afraid that opening the bell would ruin an experiment to see how long it will last. The bell's clapper oscillates back and forth constantly and quickly, meaning the Oxford Electric Bell, as it's called, has rung roughly 10 billion times, according to the university. It's made of what's called a "dry pile," which is one of the first electric batteries. Dry piles were invented by a guy named Giuseppe Zamboni (no relation to the ice resurfacing company) in the early 1800s. They use alternating discs of silver, zinc, sulfur, and other materials to generate low currents of electricity.
and ring. and ring again.
From The Fucking Article
"You'd think it'd be annoying as hell for a bell to be going off, constantly, for 175 years—but the voltage left in the battery is so low that the human ear can't actually hear the ringing. Instead, the clapper oscillates back and forth between the bell constantly, which you can see happening in this video. At this point, the experiment is more of a curiosity than anything—Croft says that the battery pulls 1 nanoAmp each time it oscillates between the bell’s sides, which is an exceedingly low amount of energy."
Actually the janitor changes it once a week when he cleans the room.
At the current estimated power draw, thats only (1 nanoampere) * 175 years = 0.00153401723 ampere hours. It's a long time: impressive durability, but not really amazing capacity. Laptop batteries are often ~1000 times that. I don't know the voltage here, so I can't do energy comparisons, just total amp hours.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energizer_Bunny/
Researchers would love to know what the battery is made of [...] It's made of what's called a "dry pile," [...] They use alternating discs of silver, zinc, sulfur, and other materials to generate low currents of electricity.
Well.. that answers that question.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
The Karpen Pile, currently on display at the Dimitrie Leonida National Technical Museum in Bucharest, Romania, still gives out 1V after 60 years.
This one has a glass enclosure so it can be studied.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
At the current estimated power draw, thats only (1 nanoampere) * 175 years = 0.00153401723 ampere hours. It's a long time: impressive durability, but not really amazing capacity. Laptop batteries are often ~1000 times that. I don't know the voltage here, so I can't do energy comparisons, just total amp hours.
Deep space exploration could benefit from that kind of durability. It's lasted longer than most governments...
Let's put this in perspective. The only "amazing" thing here is simply that the chemicals used in the battery are very stable. The amount of energy we're talking about is very, very low.
FTA, it takes around 1 nanoampere to ring the bell once. It rings around around 2 Hz. Thus it takes 2 nanoampere a second, which works out to 7200 nanoampere-hours.
So let's see how long a AA battery could run that bell. The better AAs produce 3 amp-hour of power. That is 3000000000 nanoamperes. 3000000000 / 7200 gives us 416,666 hours, which is 47.56 years. So if we could somehow spread the power of a AA out over time so the chemicals didn't break down, it could power that bell for 47.56 years. A single D battery has 12 amp-hours of power (4 times that of a AA), thus it could run the bell for 190 years.
We're not talking about much power whatsoever - simply that the chemicals and construction of the battery are such that it has not degraded that much just through time alone.
Better known as 318230.
The battery pulls 1 nanoAmp each time it oscillates between the bellâ(TM)s sides, which is an exceedingly low amount of energy
Nice units there.
The battery would pull a constant charge each movement. Nanoamps are a measure of current, not charge. Nanoamps are definitely not energy.
Maybe the summary should have mentioned the electrochemical series or something.
a nanoampere is not an amount of energy
That's exactly the kind of technology that the European Space Agency is missing.
...does the name "Pavlov" ring a bell?
QI should reference slashdot.... not the other way around
It's caused by something expanding, but it's not a gas. At least mine isn't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Turn that goddamn bell off, I can't get any sleep!
What a pile of ...
They don't know what it's made of? From http://amasci.com/emotor/duluc.html:
The DuLuc Dry Pile
High-voltage source
©1996 William J. Beaty
The Duluc Dry-Pile (also called the Zamboni Pile) was an "electrostatic battery" permanent power supply used in the early 1800s and constructed from silver foil, zinc foil, and paper. Foil disks of 2cm dia. were stacked up several thousand thick and then either compressed in a glass tube with endcaps and a screw assembly, or stacked between three glass rods with wooden endplates. Of course this is simply a Voltaic Pile, a multi-cell electrochemical battery, albiet one with output potential in the range of kilovolts. Each cell used nearly-dry paper as electrolyte, with zinc foil for one electrode and silver foil as the other.
The low moisture in the paper made for a very low rate of chemical consumption of the zinc electrode. The battery was sealed with molten Sulfur as there were no polymer sealers back then. Also a clock was powered by one of these.
Heck even the Egyptians were making batteries in clay pots thousands of years ago so that they could electroplate jewellery.