'May get hot, explode, or leak causing damage': ignorance is dangerous

[a_llusive]

http://www.energizerrecharge.eu/en/range/batteries/aaaRead more... )

Comments

[mrlloyd]

I can explain precisely none of this, but it all sounds rather dramatic.

[secondhand_rick]

contact with the mortice key... might briefly have created a circuit

I'd suggest perhaps it wasn't as brief as you think.

Can't have been long

[a_llusive]

Well, it depends on scaling. The items were together in my pocket for at most 4 minutes.

Re: Can't have been long

[secondhand_rick]

Four minutes is an awfully long time for electrons, especially with a super-highway like a mortice key to play with.

[kevandotorg]

Reading around, it sounds like there's an exciting condition called "thermal runaway" where a heat-damaged battery becomes short-circuited and can no longer stop itself from overheating. The hottest key was presumably just the most conductive one from the jangling circuit. (Or the least conductive, if it had been a while and it was cooling down less quickly than the others. It's been a while since A-Level Physics.)

You can buy little plastic capsules to store pairs of AA batteries in.

So I just have to work out when the heat damage occurred

[a_llusive]

In the five days I've owned it. Probably on charging I guess. These were AAA batteries btw, though cases (I'd just found on Amazon) fit both.

Re: So I just have to work out when the heat damage occurred

[zandev]

I've had a few rechargeable batteries die while charging, so it's possible.

Hmm

[a_llusive]

Following kevandotorg's useful comment, I found this information page and now feel more enlightened. However none of this is making me feel any more confident about the rest of the batteries I charged.

http://www.mpoweruk.com/thermal.htm