50 Dying batteries: Can they be shorted by cardboard if humid enough?

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Jack said something like:

So I ran a little test.
Somewhat humid cardboard (sitting in my unheated garage in Seattle in the
middle of winter) measures over 100 megohms on my multimeter.
Sopping wet cardboard (tapwater) measures 1 megohm. Test points 3" apart
although it didn't seem to matter much.

Energizer rated at 2850 mah
Leakage into wet cardboard would be 1.5/1000= .0015 ma.
Time to discharge battery would be 2850/.0015=1.9 million hours or
somewhat
over 200 years.

I suppose the water could have contained more ions than my tap water but
knowing that the human body is quite conductive I also checked the
resistance across my tongue and found it to be 1/10 that of the cardboard
so
it would still take over 20 years to discharge the battery.
I guess I would look elsewhere for the dead battery gremlin.

If you found that it would take 20 years to discharge a battery shorted by
your tongue, I'm suspicious that there's a miscalculation or broken metric
somewhere.

 

[Eeyore]

I can buy an 8 pack for $1 here. They're good. The fake Energizer 12 per
pack are total crap.

'Fake' Energisers ?

Do they have 'fake' written on them ?

Graham

 

[Homer J Simpson]

'Fake' Energisers ?

Do they have 'fake' written on them ?

They look the same as or similar to a good brand but they self destroy
without even being used.

 

[jasen]

I recently ordered on eBay 100 energizer AA batteries.

I tested them using a simple battery tester from radio shack. 4 were dead,
one was near death, and 95 were at an identical high mark,

dig out your magnefying glass, what's the use-by date on those batteries?

Bye.
Jasen

 

[Jack]

So specifically in what part of the calculation did you find an error?

Or are you perhaps remembering the jolt you get when you 'test' a nine volt
battery by touching it to your tongue.

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

jasen said something like:

dig out your magnefying glass, what's the use-by date on those
batteries?

Were they actually *on* those? There was something that looked like 1/2 pt.
type, but I gave up on it....

 

[Radiosrfun]

Yes, they do if you know how to read. Cheaper construction, lighter
materials, paper labels instead of silk-screening. It all says "FAKE"
loud and clear. US customs impounds tons of the crappy things every
week or so.

Graham,

Maybe you've not seen them, though they may not say "Fake" in writing, they
ARE "packaged" to look like a brand name. If you didn't look at them
closely - you would buy them "assuming" they are "brand name".
The ones I've seen, were IDENTICAL to Duracell.

There is a HUGE market out there for Knock-offs. Batteries, clothes,
watches, CDs, you name it - there is probably one for it.

 

[Jon Elson]

One possibility is they are "NOS", ie. new, old stock, like in 8-10
years old,
sitting on some shelf in a little Walgreens store or something, and they
finally
dumped them. Electronic distributors also get these in 50 and larger cases,
without the blister pack. Or maybe the eBay seller took them out of the
blister packs because they said "best used before 1998".

Jon

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Jon Elson said something like:

One possibility is they are "NOS", ie. new, old stock, like in 8-10
years old,
sitting on some shelf in a little Walgreens store or something, and they
finally
dumped them. Electronic distributors also get these in 50 and larger
cases,
without the blister pack. Or maybe the eBay seller took them out of the
blister packs because they said "best used before 1998".

No, they're mostly dated 2011 and 2012...




--
Puzzle: You are given a deck of cards all face down
except for 10 cards mixed in which are face up.
If you are in a pitch black room, how do you divide
the deck into two piles (may be uneven) that each
contain the same number of face-up cards?
Answer (rot13): Sebz naljurer va gur qrpx, qrny bhg
gra pneqf naq syvc gurz bire.