I’m pretty aware that this is a “dumb” question, but my basic understanding of electricity can’t figure it out. I know the basic concept of resistance, currency and voltage, but I can’t comprehend how it takes so long to store charge in a battery
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Voltage is roughly the same as pressure in a water system and you can use the same math to model both an electrical and water system. Imagine a capacitor as a barrier block the flow of water. It needs to build up enough pressure to break through the barrier to allow the flow to continue past it. In a capacitor, the barrier is thin layer of an insulator that prevents the flow of electrons until enough voltage has been built up to push through the insulator. You have seen this principle in action before, at an extremely large scale. In a thunder storm, voltage builds up in the clouds until the massive amount required to overcome all the air acting as an insulator. Once it can do that, all that built up voltage flows to the ground as a lightning bolt.
Batteries are something entirely different. In a battery, you have two “containers”, each connected to one of the terminals. Each contains specially prepared chemicals, one with an excess of electrons and one with a lack of them. Under normal operation, the electrons will want to flows to the container without them in order to create a balance of charges. It will keep doing this until all of the electrons have moved to the other container. In order to recharge a battery, you need to apply energy to break the chemical bonds keeping the electrons were they are and force them to move in the opposite direction. Electrons really don’t want to do that so it will take a lot of time and energy to make them move that way. Even then, you won’t get 100% of the electrons back into their container. To use the water system metaphor again, a battery is like a water tower. You need to use a pump to move the water up into it in order for there to be water to flow down from it into the system as a whole.
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