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Topic: Why does the Voltage increase when you connect many cells in series?  (Read 3865 times)

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Offline Eh?

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I was reading about how that if you connect the negative terminal of one cell to the positive terminal of another cell the voltage increases, but it doesn't make sense when I think about it. For one thing it would seem like if you connected the negative terminals to each and did the same with the positive electrodes you would get a higher voltage out of them. Instead it is negative to positive. Wouldn't the negative side just leak electrons to the positive side making the cell neutral?

Offline enahs

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Re: Why does the Voltage increase when you connect many cells in series?
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2007, 10:46:06 PM »
No.

Depending on how you want to look at it, negative flows to positive; or you can say positive flows to negative.
If you hook a positive to a negative, it can flow. If you hook a positive to a positive, it can not flow, they are resisting each other.

This is how a battery works, your device you are powering is the connection between the negative and positive terminals, the electricity flows through your device, and whatever does not get used up gets deposited on the other terminal.

When you hook them up in reverse, you are trying to force the chemical reaction that produces the free electrons in the reverse direction (this is all a rechargeable battery is).

Negative/Positive is just a indication of flow of electrons. One has to go to the other for transfer of energy to take place (remember, this is a chemical reaction under equilibrium conditions).

Offline UnintentionalChaos

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In the grossest oversimplification ever, voltage is how much energy the electrons in a circuit possess, while amperage is how many there are (flow rate, if you will). Electrons flow from the positive terminal of a battery to the negative and into the circuit, then back into the positive terminal to gain more voltage since they spend their energy by running a motor/lightbulb/etc. The number of electrons (amperage) is not depleted by a load on the circuit since matter can't be destroyed. If the batteries are all in a row, the same electrons will flow through all the batteries and pick up more voltage. If they are in parallel, each battery will generate electrons and they all flow into the same wire, hence higher amperage. I'm sure there are people out there who want to beat me now for such an oversimplification.  :P

Offline Eh?

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For some reason I assumed that the negative terminal had the electrons flowing from it into the positive terminal where they would stay. Now I see why it works like that. Thanks for your help.

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