Battery Day

What the day is

Battery Day is observed on February 18, the birthday of Alessandro Volta, born in 1745. He built the first device that could deliver a continuous electrical current, and the volt is named for him.

Origin and background

Volta's pile, announced in 1800, was a stack of alternating zinc and copper discs separated by cloth or card soaked in brine. The chemistry does the work: one metal gives up electrons more readily than the other, and connecting the ends lets that difference flow as current.

Before the pile, electricity meant static discharge, which could be stored briefly and released all at once. A steady current was something new, and within a few years it had been used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and to isolate several elements for the first time. Much of nineteenth-century chemistry depended on having it.

Every battery since works on the same principle: two materials with different affinities for electrons, separated by something that permits ions to move but forces electrons to take the external route. What changed was the materials. Lead-acid arrived in the 1850s and still starts most cars. Alkaline cells made portable electronics practical. Lithium-ion, developed through the 1970s and 80s and commercialized in 1991, packs far more energy into the same weight, and the work behind it won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019.

The current constraints are as much about supply and disposal as chemistry. Battery materials are unevenly distributed and often mined under poor conditions, and recycling rates for lithium-ion remain low relative to lead-acid, which is among the most recycled products in the world.

How to take part

• Recycle the drawer. Most areas have collection points, and batteries do not belong in household waste.
• Never bin lithium-ion cells. Crushed in a truck they start fires, and waste-facility fires from them are now common.
• Tape the terminals of used button and nine-volt cells before storing them together.
• Keep lithium devices between roughly 20 and 80 percent charge for longevity, and away from heat.
• Check smoke alarm batteries while you are thinking about it.