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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To charge a battery, you create a voltage difference between its two ends. The creation of that difference is the super-fast part.
But once you’ve got that difference in place, that’s when the work of charging the battery begins. In the case of a lithium ion battery, you’re actually moving lithium ions from one end of the battery to the other, through some gooey stuff in between. That’s the slow part. It’s like if you put a turtle in a corridor and opened a gate at the far end with turtle food. It only takes a moment to open the gate, but that doesn’t put the turtle at the food immediately.
I don’t want to over-use the turtle analogy, so we’ll go back to lithium ions. The battery manufacturer wants to pack a lot of battery life in there which means they pack a lot of ions in there. Which means it takes time to move them all.
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