Search result: 11 for batteries suck


From: Rodolfo Gallego
Newsgroups: rec.photo.digital
Subject: The Batteries Saga!!!


Hi group,

ALKALINE DISPOSABLES

They still exist because of convenience, not chemistry: You can buy them—for a pittance—from New York to Nepal. Perfect for occasional-use devices, such as smoke detectors and TV remotes, because of their long shelf life.


NICKEL-CADMIUM (NiCd)

Good for 1,000 discharge cycles. They’re toxic and suffer “memory effect,” when damaging crystals form if the cell isn’t often fully discharged. NiCds are rare except in power tools; their high discharge rates suit big-current draws.

1. Pick up a USB charging adapter. In a pinch, you can siphon power from a computer to revive dead cells.


2. Charging AA or AAA cells can take 15 minutes with Rayovac’s NiMH rechargeable system, which equalizes internal pressure. $40; rayovac.com

3. Buying a digital camera? Check the shots-per-charge spec from the Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA) for an apples-to-apples comparison.

200 B.C.E. Parthians in present-day Baghdad make a crude battery, an iron rod surrounded by a copper cylinder inside a clay jar filled with vinegar.


1780 Italian physicist Luigi Galvani discovers that a frog will twitch as if shocked when brass hooks attached to its nerves are touched to an iron plate. He calls it “animal electricity.”

1800 Setting out to trump Galvani, Italian physicist Alessandro Volta invents the first modern battery, using zinc and copper separated by a salt solution.

If you haven’t perfected your tan yet this summer, have we got a spot for you! A place where the sun shines 11 times as bright as on Earth, doesn’t set for 4,000 hours, and produces 800�F temperatures. There’s much to explore, since this exotic destination is mostly unmapped. If you get lost, a compass will orient you, thanks to an Earth-like magnetic field.
We’re talking, of course, about Mercury. Despite the sales pitch, only one craft has ever visited the tiny planet: Mariner 10,

On September 8, a 420-pound capsule will plunge meteorlike into the upper atmosphere at more than 6 miles a second. A large parachute will then slow it down to a gentle 10 miles an hour. Finally, to keep the delicate ceramic plates securing the 10-microgram cargo inside from breaking on landing, a helicopter flown by Hollywood stunt pilots will hook the craft midair by its parafoil and lower it gently to the desert floor in Utah.

The Vulcan ears of Star Trek fans perked up this summer when two research teams announced that they had successfully performed teleportation. But the scientists hadn’t beamed William Shatner to Pluto (alas); their feat was solid-particle quantum teleportation, which doesn’t transport matter itself but instead transmits the quantum state of a single atom to another atom without a direct link between the two.

On June 21, Burt Rutan's innovative manned rocket, SpaceShipOne, touched down in the Mojave Desert after a historic trip into suborbital space. Pilot Mike Melvill flew the rocket to 328,491 feet, just barely punching out of the atmosphere. After touchdown, as the craft was being towed before a crowd of 27,000 spectators, newly crowned astronaut Melvill sat astride his spaceship holding a sign that read "SpaceShipOne, GovernmentZero."

If the flight does indeed mark the beginning of nongovernment-supported spaceflight, what comes next?

Creators: Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda
Community: Cities afflicted by light pollution
Project: Synthetic star

In March 1966, we wrote that the Northrop F-5 supersonic fighter (below) had been plucked from obscurity—it went straight from Air Force training grounds to the war in Vietnam. The F-5 had been developed a decade earlier to replace aging F-84s and F-86s in countries receiving U.S. military assistance; at home, though, it was eclipsed by “supersophisticated fighter-bombers” like the F-105 Thunderchief and F-4 Phantom. But the F-5s proved their worth when a squadron took flight in Vietnam.