Benm
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- Aug 16, 2007
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I think really, you would need to log the voltage as well as current through the whole discharge cycle to correctly calculate the Wh. 1500mAh assumes the voltage stays exactly at 4v, or at least 4v is the average voltage throughout the discharge cycle.
Semantics anywho, close enough.
You're right on that, but battery manufacturers tend to over-estimate these things by margins large enough to stop caring about the details. Actual energy content (and mAh's delivered) depend on the rate of discharge in nearly all types of battery, so without knowing that part, you might as well multiply mAh's with stated voltage and be done with it
As for exploding cells: if you short them out, most will go out with a bang or get hot enough to damage whatever they are in. This was true for NiCd batteries back in the day, and still holds true for lithiums and sometimes even lead acid batteries.
The problem with lithiums is that some of them exploded in unexpected circumstances, like when discharged too far, or even spontanously in a very few cases. On the other hand, you can sometimes abuse them beyond reason: i have a camera rechargable lithium that went through a washing and drying cycle in a pocket, and it still works, just some corrosion on the contacts
