Like the title says, why are batteries at risk to catching fire on planes? Why do they ask you to remove batteries from your luggage?
In: 20
A battery powers things. It does this by converting chemical energy into electrical energy (potential).
Think about how your powerful phone can operate for hours at a time. It has a large screen, communicates with cell towers, wifi, etc. It’s a whole computer in your pocket that can last all day on a single charge.
That is actually a fair amount of energy.
Under normal operation, the battery slowly releases that energy. However, the energy is still stored in that battery in chemical format. Essentially, if a li-ion battery has burst, it reacts with oxygen and begins to rapidly release all of that energy. Releasing energy at that rate basically causes a fire.
Tl;dr: batteries store energy. If li-ions get punctured, energy release. Fire. Bad times.
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