Why Lithium Batteries SUCK

0:00Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Science. I am Michael Stevens. And I'm Hannah Fry. And today, Michael, I just, to be honest with you, I just, I just want to rant about lithium batteries for 45 minutes. Is that right? You okay with that? Oh, I would love that. I, I, what is there to rant about? I know so little about them. I thought they were great. No, they're pathetic. They're pathetic. And actually we could do a lot better. That's, um, that's essentially what I'm going to be doing this time. I'll tell you what, let's, let's start off, right? You're in, you're in a room. You've got, um, you've got a few things going on around you.

0:29See if you can point out the most energy-dense thing in the room. So I'm not talking about nuclear, you know, I'm not talking about like fusion or fission here. I'm talking about like... Yeah, like what's the most massive thing? There you go. That's the most energy. You mean energy we could get using traditional means. Yeah. Yeah. I've got firewood. Okay. Which is pretty good. You burn that, you're getting 16 megajoules per kilogram, which is good. It's a good start. It's pretty decent stuff there. Okay. I don't really have a benchmark here, but let's just compare it to something like I've got fire starters, wax soaked with petrol, with gasoline.

1:05Not really. Really, it's just some hydrocarbon. I don't know which one, but it's very, very volatile. Well, TNT, TNT, not quite as good as wood in terms of the amount of energy you get per kilogram. You're getting about 4.6. Your lighter fluid, if that's up there with the petrol, I mean, that's pretty good. You're getting sort of 45, 46. I don't know if you've got any oil there, any cooking or butter maybe? Yeah, I've got olive oil. I've got butter. They're all great. 37 for olive oil. Slightly higher, by the way, than for butter, which is 30 megajoules per kilogram. Your body fat, actually. Anything that you're storing in your belly.

1:43That's great, that stuff. 39. 39.40 or so. Not yours specifically, Michael. Anybody's. Anybody's. How do you know? My fat could be special. Well, maybe it has been infused with petrol because that would pump it up a bit. Petrol is pretty phenomenal in terms of its energy density. All of these, by the way, look absolutely gigantic compared to lithium batteries, right? Lithium ion batteries, you're getting less than one megajoule per kilogram, right? If you had the choice between a slab of butter or human body fat and a bit of a lithium ion battery, you would be a fool. You would be a fool to ever go for the lithium.

2:25It's pathetic, Michael. I did realize. Where is human body fat? Human body fat is about 40, 39, 40. The fat in your butt cheek is 40 times more energy dense than the fanciest lithium battery in your phone. Oh, yeah. But I mean, obviously, I can't just liposuction my belly and then put it into a machine to charge my phone, but I can very easily plug a battery in and out of something. I mean, okay, you could, it just wouldn't be very sustainable, right? Oh, that's true too, yeah. You know, I think replenishing, I mean, it'd be quite a fun way to live, right? Eat as much as you can, lipo the fat all the time.

3:07I was just thinking, why can't our bodies be the power bank? And so at night, I'm like, oh, I got to charge up my power bank. And I'm just like eating ice cream drizzled in olive oil. And I think I'm going to put this on the list. I'm going to put this on the list of alternatives for lithium ion batteries, which you're going to come to at the end. But the thing is, is that the energy density of this totally pathetic invention, I'm going hard, isn't even, isn't even anywhere close to the problems that it has. Maybe I'm overselling that slightly. I just don't like it. All right. And that's what this episode is about.

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5:53you know that there's a bell in oxford that has been ringing twice a second since 1840 oh yes i did but you can't really hear it no it's very quiet i agree but it's going it's still going um it's this battery that nobody has ever replaced and think about this right this has been this bell has been ringing 1840. That's before the invention of the light bulb. Before the invention of the electric light, an electric bell has been ringing nonstop continuously. Can you describe this? Because I saw it a while ago, but it's, it is a very old, like one of the earliest batteries ever made and it's running a bell and it just keeps clanging the bell.

6:31And it's been clanging it since before the light bulb was invented. Also, by the way, it's not going to run flat in our, in, in our lifetimes. It's got this little, this little four millimeter a clapper on it that will physically wear out before the battery dies, right? The battery's going to outlive the bell that it rings. This is this incredibly slow release of electricity that this dry pile, very old style battery is releasing. The thing about it, let me get a picture of it up for you. So people aren't completely sure exactly what's going on inside of it. So it sort of looks kind of looks a bit like two melted candles really that are inside of this cloche, this glass cloche.

7:15And it has a sort of pendulum that swings between them. And as it does so, it moves the charge from one side to the other. Essentially, it gets charged in one direction and charged in the other direction going back. Oh, so when the ball hits one of the bells, the charge gets switched to the other bell. And then it is pulled. Exactly right. I see. And I had never heard the word cloche. Cloche? I'd never heard that before. I would call that a bell jar. Now, I just don't know. My vocab might be limited. But yeah, it looks really Victorian. It might be mine. It might be mine, Michael. Closh is a thing where, you know, when you go to like really, really fancy dinners and they have like a metal bowl backwards, like upside down over your food.

7:59No, when I go to fancy dinners, the crust of the pizza is stuffed. You need to hang out more with the king, Michael. That's right. That's right. All right. Let them know I'm available. But I really like this idea. I really like this idea that actually, right at the earliest, earliest days of people sort of playing around with electricity and trying to work out what it was doing, this sort of, like, novelty item was purchased and then ended up in this corridor at Oxford. But it's the slowest fight that a battery has basically ever made. And as we go through, we're going to get through to the fastest release that a battery has ever made, which is the record held by lithium, because boy, can it release stuff fast when it wants to.

8:48Let me go back in time a little bit, because that was the 1840s that that particular bell was created. But actually, the story about batteries goes back a little bit further to the 1780s in Italy. And there was this guy, he's called Luigi Galvani. And he is messing around, like dissecting frogs. And what he does is he hangs these dead frogs on a railing. And then he sees that they start kicking. And he sort of like, he sort of has them, you know, maybe on some foil. And there's like maybe some lemon juice around. Or he's doing all these different experiments. But every now and then, even though these frogs are dead, he sees their legs starting to twitch.

9:30And so he's like, okay, well, look, well, I know what's going on here. Clearly, living creatures have this spark inside them, this animal electricity, right? That must be what's going on here. And he's got this friend, he's called Alessandro Volta. And Alessandro Volta is like, no, hon, I don't think that's what's going on at all. I think it's the metal that's touching the frog leg. There's something going on with the metals. It's just that the leg itself is just telling you there's electricity there. There's kind of nothing else going on. So what he does, I've got a demo for you. You ready? Yeah.

10:02What he does, plays around with loads of different, loads of different setups. And he comes up with this thing, this way to reliably create electricity. Hold on. Oh, neat. You really do have a whole demo for us. Ooh, okay. I thought they were all coins. We've got some copper coins and some washers. Yes, you do. Okay, so these are zinc washers, right? So basically what this is, is sort of bluntly the stuff you would find in your drawer downstairs, right? You've got some zinc washers and some copper coins, okay? And then I also here have some water that I have dissolved salt into. Okay, salt water.

10:40And I've like soaked salt water, some brine, basically. I've maybe, frankly, put in a bit too much salt, but that's fine. And then I've got these like little bits of cardboard that I've soaked in the brine. Ah. Okay, so what he did, right? And there was a lot of experimentation for this, But essentially what he did is he started layering these things together. Okay, so you have a piece of aluminum foil you've put down on your table. And then on top of that, you've put a zinc washer. On top of the zinc washer, you put a copper coin. And now I'm going to place a little bit of brine-soaked cardboard on top.

11:15Okay. And then essentially you repeat this process, right? Because that is, those three together, fundamentally, all you need to create electricity, which feels insane to me. These are just stuff that you would find in a drawer and you can use them to create electricity. However, it's not going to be bright enough to actually see it as electricity unless I just create a few more. So hang on, that's not very good. Can you tell me how this creates electricity or do you want to wait until you've built it? It turns out that what is happening here is that the salt water, the brine, is physically dissolving the zinc.

11:54It's like actually corroding it. And the way that it's doing that is that all of the zinc that's at the surface that's touching the brine, it releases two electrons and then the zinc ion escapes into the solution, right, into the brine. So what happens is you have this little zinc atom that goes off in two different directions. Half of it, the ion, goes into the salt water. And the other part, the electrons, go up into the copper, which is sort of the easiest place for them to escape. So you've kind of got this sandwich, right? So this sandwich, this bit of zinc, is sandwiched between some salt water on the bottom, which is where the ion goes, and then a bit of metal on top, which is where the electrons go.

12:42So what you're doing is essentially like you're taking a single atom, you're breaking it apart. Part of it's going one way, part of it's going the other. Now, no one really cares what direction that the ion itself is going in. But the electrons, electrons moving through a conductor, I mean, that's literally electricity, right? Yeah, yeah. So if I continue with this right now, I really hope this is going to work. It did work when I tried it earlier, but I don't know whether. Cross all your fingers and toes, okay? And if it doesn't work. Okay, so you've got the stack done and you've got, there's a zinc washer on the bottom, but there's a copper penny on the top.

13:20Yeah, exactly. Now, hopefully, oh my gosh, if this works, Michael, I'm going to be so excited. Okay, so now you have some wires attached to a little tiny light bulb. I do. a teeny teeny tiny little led i'm really hoping that this is going to light up you're touching one wire to the very top copper coin and the other wire to the aluminum foil at the bottom on the bottom oh no it's not enough did you see that no i didn't it's behind your hand it worked it worked it worked it worked really oh look at that i can see that little flicker you know what i'm going to turn this i'm going to turn my light off it's very dark now so There it is.

14:01It's like an orange, a reddish orange, very faint little ember almost looking light, but it's coming from the LED. Okay, so I'm off and now I'm on. I'm off and now I'm on. Come on. That is so cool. Come on. That's the coolest thing. I didn't know it was so easy. It's literally some junk from a drawer and I just made electricity. Yeah. Come on. I think that is absolutely amazing. What kind of LED was that? Like how, if I wanted to do this at home, what kind of LED do I need to get? It's an LED that I stole from my daughters, like practice electricity, play with electricity kit. So it's just anything, anything.

14:42And the LED isn't even special, right? It's just, this is the, just the way that I know that there's electricity there. You could use a frog's leg if you want to. Anyway, I think that is... Made me nerdily. Maybe I got too excited just because I was so worried it wouldn't work and than it is. But I think that's really phenomenal, that actually it really demonstrates how electricity is just this chemical reaction, right? It's just something that happens when you move electrons around. And that's literally all it is, right? That's literally all it is. Yeah. So which way is the electricity flowing?

15:17Which way are the electrons flowing in your battery? So the electrons are going up because you have zinc and then copper on top and the ions are going down. Okay, the zinc ions go down, the electrons go up. Now when they reach the top, there was a copper penny on top. Then why do they continue moving through the wire? Why aren't they happy to just stay on the top copper? Because they carry on moving because now the bottom has got all of the ions on it and the ions are positively charged. So now you have like a charge differential between the top and the bottom. So the way that I like to think about batteries, right, is like, Like, you know, let's say that you go to a concert with your friend and you go through the turnstile together.

16:00And then you're like, OK, I am going to go straight to my seat. And then your friend goes, OK, cool. You go straight to your seat. I'm going to go, I laugh at the stadium. I'm going to buy some hot dogs. I'm going to go and buy some beer and I'll come back and I'll meet you at the seat afterwards. That is literally all, that is literally all a battery is doing. You are the eye on the kind of like the positive thing that's just going straight to the end point. and the electron is going all the way around, going all the way around, all the way around, all the way around, and I'll meet you back at the seat.

16:30I'll meet you back afterwards. Right, you're the ion. That's literally it, yeah. The electron's doing a circuit, but it's going to come back to you. It's going to come back to you. Maybe, maybe, I mean, let's get technical here, right? Maybe it's not actually you. Maybe it's another identical version of you. Fair enough, yeah. They probably don't have friends, but they do have affinities for a kind. Yes, let's imagine that it's, Let's imagine it's you and me, Michael, right? We're off. I'll be the ion. You can be the electron. You go off and do all of the other work. And just by virtue of the fact that you're doing this enormous giant lap, you just so happen to be going through a kettle, like, you know, like a light bulb in that instance, whatever it might be, literally anything that you like, a computer, just by virtue of you traveling through it, that is electricity, right?

17:14Now, do we know for sure that it's not personal, that it's not the electrons trying to get back to their original atom. I don't know how we would know one way or the other. I guess you could like remove the zinc ions and replace it with some new zinc and then the electrons still want to get to the zinc that they can reach. Yeah, excuse me. Regardless of whether they used to know each other. Where's my original body? Thank you. Excuse me. I told that zinc atom, that zinc nucleus, that I was going to come back. I've trying to get there and now i'm running a light bulb exactly i'll be back in a second and but also don't forget right the speed that these electrons are moving at it's you know the distance the difference between kind of going down the pile and round is almost nothing right so the way that the volta did this okay i mean this is like i find this so crazy this is in 1800 you guys right like this is so early and the way that he did it is he knew that there was a fish a Mediterranean torpedo ray, and also the South American electric eel.

18:17He knew that they were able to create electricity because they could sort of sting their prey. He realized that inside these eels, they had basically a version of this. He was sort of copying it. They have these organs that are built of these, like thousands of flat cells that are stacked like coins. And that's what he was trying to copy, right? It's like, okay, well, maybe this is like, in fact, he called this thing, the thing that I've just shown you, the artificial electric organ. And it's kind of basically a forgery of biology that he was trying to create. Right. I love that because today we think of electronic stuff as being counter to biology.

18:53Right. However, in its inception, electricity was a thing that came from organs. Yes, completely. And then was also extremely closely linked to biology immediately afterwards. Because at this point, you know, Volta was like, okay, great, I've got this thing, but no one sort of, you didn't know what to do with it. And then Galvani, who was the, you know, the guy with the frog's legs, he was like, okay, well, I think that there's something here about sort of human flesh or dead flesh, biological matter, that kind of thing. And he was right in a way, incidentally. We should say he was right because your nerves do run on electricity.

19:32Your nerves are moving charged ions around. I mean, the way your brain works is sort of squirty wet computer, as you've described it previously. Anyway, so Galvani, his nephew, who is a guy called Giovanni Aldini, he knew all of this stuff was going on. He knew about Volta's battery. He knew about what his uncle had thought about, you know, flesh and electricity and stuff. So what he did is he wanted to see whether you could repeat the frog's leg trick with a dead human. Okay. Uh-huh. Right now. I'm going to pull a Mary Shelley. I'm going to pull a Mary Shelley. And Mary Shelley comes into this story in a moment.

20:14By the way, if you are sensitive of ears, sensitive of ears, I would just switch them off for a moment. I know a lot of people listen to this program with their kids. So just I'll try and put it in the most kid-friendly way. So this is like back in the days when obviously hangings were still an acceptable way to deal with criminals. So what happened was in 1803, this is in London, there was a man called George Foster, who was convicted of drowning his wife in the Paddington Canal. And what they did is they, they managed to work out a way to immediately after he was hung, to take his body and then subject it to a really big electrical current.

20:59And they didn't know what was going to happen. They weren't sure whether maybe he would come alive, right? Maybe this would be, maybe he would sort of resurface. They genuinely had no idea what would happen. They connected up this batch, they had loads of people watching, and the jaw sort of started quivering, the muscles contorted, one eye opened. The right fist started clenching and the legs started moving. And everyone in the room was extremely freaked out. Extremely freaked out by this. There is one person who was there, actually in an official capacity to witness what was going on. And, well, the story goes that he was so horrified by what he'd seen that he died of shock that night.

21:45He'd sort of watched a corpse move, and it had killed him. Right. So they brought a corpse not to life, but to like, foe life. And in the process, they actually created another corpse. Exactly. Exactly. Apparently, there's one account that says that actually this particular guy, Mr. Pass, the one who passed away, he had been the person who had been responsible for getting this hanged man to the experiment as quickly as possible, right? He was the one who had dealt with the body. And yet, even so, he was so horrified by what had been going on. They also, by the way, they had like a legal disclaimer, I guess, on all of this.

22:32They were like, what if we do bring him back to life? What do we do about his crime today? Hang him again? Well, luckily, luckily, I'm not sure that's the right word. His sentence was that he hang until he be dead. So there's no loophole there. There's no loophole for resurrection, right? Okay, so if he comes back, they still need to finish the sentence. They'd have to hang him again. They'd have to hang him again. That would be so shocking because especially at that time. Remind me, what year was this? 1803. 1803? Like, you're definitely going to be thinking, okay, we can conquer death. This is Lazarus made real through the work of humans.

23:16Should we be doing this? Should we be doing this? Can you imagine the crisis, the sort of like ethical, moral crisis that was going on in London around this time? Not a coincidence that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1816. I have heard actually different versions of this story that there were these demonstrations with this kind of thing, right? Like using electricity in order to reignite bodies, human or otherwise, and that she had been in the audience at one of those demonstrations. I think it's all a little bit disputed and a little apocryphal. Yeah. But what we can say for sure is that this was a big thing, a very big deal.

24:03And it was on the minds of the sort of learned classes in London exactly this moment that you potentially could bring creatures back to life. If only you had a battery big enough, right? Or kind of strong enough. So it didn't bring this man back. Um, it maybe looked like he started moving again, but what was their immediate conclusion? If they had more power, could they do it? Or... I don't know. I don't... Honestly, I don't know, um, is the answer. One thing I will say is that, you know the word galvanize? Yep. Okay, so this comes from Galvani, and the word means spurring someone to suddenly take action.

24:46right yeah like electrocuting something into being almost i know i love that i love also thinking of volta and galvani hanging out and being like dude our names like come on galvanize volts we're destined for this voltage come on come on we can do this i know ahistorical it's like what is it called nominative determinism i do like the idea that they uh that that the names existed before them and then they decided to live their lives according to it. Oh, I know, I know. There's a lot of little jokes like that. Oh, it reminds me of the one where it's like, Jesus is hanging out with Judas and Judas is like, oh, I gotta go, man, but I'll see you at the Last Supper.

25:27And Jesus is like, at the what? And Judas goes, oh, I mean, just the regular supper.

25:35I like that. I like that a lot. That's a really good joke. That's very good. Okay, here is the thing, okay? So all of this is like the kind of Western version of the story that all of these big breakthroughs were being made in the 1800s. There is another version of this story that actually humans had batteries way earlier, way, way, way earlier. Oh, of course. Because, do you know about this already? No, but I'm just thinking, I just saw you make a battery that could have been made much earlier than 1800. In Baghdad. right, in Iraq in 1936, they found this 2 ,000-year-old jar. And within the jar, there was a copper cylinder with an iron rod inside it.