When putting in more than one battery in a device, why should they all be at the same charge?
In: Chemistry
Depends on how the multiple batteries are connected together.
For parallel connections, batteries with a higher state of charge will be transferring their energy to the batteries with the lower. Non rechargeable batteries cannot be recharged and having energy pumped into them will likely cause them to leak as a result, while the rate of power transfer for rechargeable batteries might be too great and cause damage or overheating.
For series connections, the device will work for a while until the weakest batteries are discharged fully, but because there is still some energy in the others the device might continue working. This will cause the weakest batteries to discharge down to zero and then be charged with reverse polarity. Same as before, non rechargeable batteries will leak while rechargeable batteries will be destroyed.
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