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At Oxford, a Battery That's Lasted 175 Years -- So Far

Posted by timothy on from the ceaseless-tintinnabulation dept.

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.

14 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."

    1. Re:Bullshit by dj245 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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."

      1 nanoamp is so tiny that it may be being recharged from the environment somehow.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    2. Re:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, put a AA in a box and come back in 175 years, and try it out. Then we'll see how impressive that is.

    3. Re:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > 1 nanoamp is so tiny that it may be being recharged from the environment somehow.

      At that rate it doesn't need any recharging. A continuous 1 nanoamp draw (it doesn't make sense to say it draws 1 nanoamp per oscillation because amperage is a rate not a quantity) would discharge a small 1 Amp-Hour battery over one billon hours, or 114,000 years. The fact that it hasn't discharged through interal leakage is pretty impressive though.

    4. Re:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      9V batteries have more than enough current available to stop someone's heart if put in series. If you have 400-1000V DC worth that's more than enough to kill someone. Be glad that a little knowledge didn't get someone killed.

    5. Re:Bullshit by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Funny

      Then we'll see how impressive that is.

      Not nearly as much as his coming back...

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    6. Re:Bullshit by Adriax · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, we americans would never keep under performing, outdated electrical appliances around for the historic factor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
      And we have no attachment whatsoever to historical figures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

      --
      I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
    7. Re:Bullshit by riverat1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      1 nanosecond..., honestly, that's typically British. In the US that battery would have been trashed already. The Brits are way too much attached to these long lasting historical figures. And royalty is another example.

      Well, there is a light bulb in Livermore, CA that's been burning for 114 years. That hasn't been continuous as there have been some power outages and it's been moved a few times but the Livermore fire department seems pretty attached to it.

    8. Re:Bullshit by rgbatduke · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, you can kill yourself with a single 9 V battery -- or the 12 V battery of your car. One man did:

      http://darwinawards.com/darwin...

      The computation goes as follows. The issue, as several people have pointed out, is that it is current across the heart that causes defibrillation (basically interrupting the heart's natural rhythm so that it pulses chaotically), not a matter of cooking the person (which will also work, BTW, but isn't the most common cause of electrical shock deaths). It isn't even the case that more current is always worse -- there appears to be a range of currents that are more toxic than others. A brief explanation of this is here:

      https://www.physics.ohio-state...

      The maximally toxic range of currents across the thorax is empirically 0.1 to 0.2 amps. Below that it isn't enough to defibrillate, above that the heart muscle clamps all the way which means that when the current is removed it is actually more likely that it can with help or will on its own restore a normal rhythm.

      The internal resistance of the human body once you introduce probes through the comparatively insulating skin is around 100 ohms. A 9V battery across ~100 ohms makes a thoracic current of roughly 0.1 amp, right at the start of the maximally fatal range. The Darwin above was given because an idiot didn't believe this and stuck probes through his skin to "prove" that it wasn't so.

      Personally I've experienced shocks from 12 V car batteries when screwing around with them on rainy nights with salt water on my hands. That's another good way of reducing skin resistance. I didn't take the hit across the torso, but it was every bit as painful as a 110V shock through dry skin -- more so, actually -- and caused my muscles to contract like lightning.

      None of this is actually news -- it has been known as long as there has been electricity, because people have been killing themselves accidentally with electricity just that long. My scout leader 50 years ago worked for GE (as an inventor, actually -- one of the people who invented the photodiode controlled light). He taught me that long ago to ground one finger and then brush another finger of the same hand against any possible hot wire so that you find out with a jolt across your hand, not through your torso. Hand to foot, hand to hand, not so good. People used to kill themselves all the time touching hot electrical switches while standing in wet feet on bathroom floors before ground fault circuits were invented and mandated by code.

      None of which has much to do with TFA, but it is good to know if you work at all with electricity. Physicists need to know it just to be able to teach it to their students so THEY don't kill themselves accidentally one day. It isn't the voltage that kills you, it's the current, and it doesn't take much current to do the job (or much voltage to create a fatal current).

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
  2. Oops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Actually the janitor changes it once a week when he cleans the room.

    1. Re:Oops by msobkow · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I hate to tell you this, but most people who've worked support in manufacturing and office environments have similar stories. I spent close to two months getting paged by Northern Telecom in Bramalea, ON for a manufacturing system failure on the shop floor at 2-3 AM most days per week. It was only by deciding to hang out for an entire night watching the area that I found out it was being caused by a cleaning lady unplugging the network bridge to plug in her radio while cleaning the area.

      So seeing as I have one of those stories myself, I find them a lot easier to believe than most of you kids do.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  3. The Karpen Pile by psergiu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  4. Re: let the experiment run by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm sure Chuck Berry would agree that is an awfully long time to be playing with your ding-a-ling!

  5. Re:Interstellar missions... by arth1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Deep space tends to be very cold

    This is misleading at best.

    Space in itself is a near vacuum, which (a) has no temperature of its own, and (b) is a wonderful insulator. Which is why a thermos uses vacuum for insulation.
    Objects in space can become very cold over long time spans, as heat slowly radiates away without being replenished at the same rate. But space itself doesn't cool them down.

    Voyager 1, which is the operative craft that's been in service the longest and receives the least amount of heat from the sun is, after most of the heaters have been turned off to conserve energy, running at around -80C temperatures. That's a veritable furnace compared to other older objects in space that have radiated away more heat over much longer time.

    Also, you say "chemical batteries". Well, yes, it is, but this is a dry battery. The composition doesn't change with colder temperatures, unlike wet batteries where liquids freeze. Dry batteries don't have that problem, which is why it is interesting.