Why doesn’t current flow when I connect the positive pole of one battery to the negative pole of another? In the moment of contact, shouldn’t the electrons that are abundant in the negative pole want to rush to the positively charged pole of the other battery until the charge in both poles equalizes?
My mental model of a battery is a water tank that has a wall through the middle, giving it two partitions. One of them is full of water, the other empty. Now you can connect a hose from one end to the other and water will flow from full to empty until the water level equalizes. But if you connected the empty side of one tank to the full side of another tank, water would still flow. Clearly my model is flawed. Can someone explain? Thank you!
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Two batteries connected positive to negative don’t form a circuit. You need a circuit for electricity to flow. That means in addition to the connection between batteries that you mention, you have to connect their other poles to form a circuit.
Your example with the water is fatally flawed simply because water flows according to gravity, electricity flows according to the orientation of the poles on the batteries and the presence of a circuit to flow through.
Two batteries is not a circuit. It’s a component in a circuit. You have to add more to it before energy will flow.
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