I got to thinking while boosting my lawnmower’s battery. It is my understanding that the electrons leave the battery from the negative pole and enter back in via the positive pole to close the circuit. I just never understood why the 2 negative terminals were connected to each other and not to the opposite charge when performing a “boost”. If the dead battery needs energy, why not plug the good battery Negative to the bad batteriy Positive to “feed it”?
I can’t make sense of two batteries both having their negative going to one another…
My nose is bleeding. Help. Thanks!
Edit: typos
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When a battery is doing work, it’s using chemical reaction to create energy, to push electrons out the negative end and suck electrons into the positive. When your battery is weak or has no charge, that means the chemical energy has been used up and it can’t push and pull anymore electrons around.
Feeding a strong battery’s negative to the weak negative pushes electrons back into it and reverses the chemical reaction, feeding energy back into the system (like blowing air into a deflated balloon). Connecting the strong negative to the weak positive won’t do anything, because the positive plates are already filled up with electrons. It’s the negative plates that need the electrons.
When charging a battery, electrons must always be fed in the opposite direction of how they move when the battery is doing work.
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