Recently a couple of big YouTube channels reached out to me
said they admire my work and asked me to do a video on the battery bounce test
the way this works is if you drop a new battery on it end it doesn't bounce
and sometimes even stands up
but if the battery is used or depleted when you drop it
it bounces sometimes the full length of a battery or more
it's pretty amazing
that's what we're going to do
let's get into it
these are the batteries that I'm going to bounce
I have three of the Kirkland brand
and three Duracell's
I'm going to get all of my dischargers setup
discharge these batteries and bounce three different voltages
new
half discharged
and fully discharged
I'm going to start discharging the batteries
I'm going to discharge it at about 300 milliamps
for the lowest discharged battery I'm going to go down to 1.2 volts
which is usually fully discharged for an alkaline battery
my batteries are all discharged I have them all mixed up
Aso this is a perfect opportunity for me to try the bounce test
and see if I can tell the difference between the ones that are new
and the ones that are discharged
here's the first one well that one didn't bounce It all
that one seemed to bounce kind of a little
haha that one bounced for sure
so my guess is that this is going to be the discharged battery
this one is going to be the medium battery
and this one is going to be the full battery
this one bounces the most
this one's kind of in-between
and this one doesn't balance at all
first thing I want to do before setting everything up is measure the voltage of each battery
and write it on the side
so when we look at the high-speed footage
we can see which battery is which
all of my voltages are marked on my batteries
and this is going to give us a good indication of how much bounce
is associated with how much discharge
the biggest issue that everybody else had with this test was getting the batteries to
drop all at the same time
so I put together a rig
I'm calling it The drop rig
and this is going to drop all of the batteries within 1 millisecond of one another
to give us Fair results
all I need to do now is put all of these batteries in order hit the switch and drop them
all right we're all set this is going to be drop number one
in 3 2 1okay let's take a look at the high-speed footage
and see which one of these batteries dropped first
all right that looked a lot more amazing than I thought it was going to look
and if you're wondering why dead batteries bounce there's actually a reason for it
because the electrolyte in new batteries is a gel-like substance
and it kind of acts like sand or buckshot in a dead blow hammer
when the battery drops that gel like electrolyte absorbs the shock of the drop and the battery
stops in its place
when the electrolyte is depleted the more depleted it gets
the more dense the electrolyte becomes and the less shock it absorbs
so basically when a dead battery falls there is no gel-like substance to absorb that shock
so the battery bounces
that's why dead batteries bounce just in case you were wondering
okay so this is going to be my second drop on the steel plate
and this time I'm going to line them up in order of voltage from lowest to highest
ready to go let's see how it looks this time
what I did different I discharged this battery a little bit more these 1.4 volt batteries
I discharged them another 500 milliamp hours
here we go 3 2 1
that looked pretty amazing oh my nah I'm just kidding
but that looked pretty smooth though
our 1.2 volt Duracell battery is the one that won the pole vault competition
because that battery jumped over all the other ones and stood in the air
got some serious air time
you can see that all of the batteries were released at precisely the same moment
so my rig worked great but the Duracell batteries seem to be slightly heavier
then the Kirkland batteries because because they all hit the platform at just a slight
fraction of a second earlier
a fraction of a millisecond probably
so that was it for this I'm going to remove this steel plate now
and do one more drop on the straight countertop
and then yeah take a look and see how it looks on the countertop
and then wrap this thing up
this is going to be my last and final set up here and this is the straight counter
that's it so that's my take on bouncing batteries
I learned a lot in this episode
and I also learned a new way to check batteries to see if they're dead or not
I mean anybody can do that kids would love to do that
you know how many times I've given my nieces and nephews new batteries for their toys
and they mix them up
and then I walk over there and I'm like oh no
now I got to get a tester and test the batteries
I never knew about the battery bouncing thing believe it or not
so that was my take on the battery bouncing test
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