Engineering Question #2077
Tony, a 14 year old male from Melbourne asks on May 2, 2004,
In my recent science project, I tried discharging batterys in the freezer, fridge and room. The results were , the lower the temperature the shorter the battery life. Please explain why?
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The answer
Barry Shell
answered on May 2, 2004
Batteries create electricity through electrochemical reactions. Like most chemical reactions, the ones inside a battery proceed more slowly at lower temperatures. Since we do not know exactly what kind of battery you were testing, nor your exact experimental procedure, we cannot say precisely what is going on or what the explanation is, however it probably has something to do with the electrochemistry of batteries.
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