Charge Buildup & Equalization on Batteries A & B

[Evil Bunny]

The generator is exerting a force on the electrons, but since they have nowhere to go no charge builds up.

They have all kinds of places to go. The issue at hand is that they only want to go to one place. Back to the "return" of the generator. The question is why? It doesn't have anything to do with charge, apparently... You started to talk about positive ions exerting an opposite force. That sounded almost like it had to do with charge, so I'm still missing something.

It has been explained repeatedly and in many different ways that a circuit must be completed. This much I do understand. What I don't understand is why... I thought the whole reason an electron ever moved in the first place was because of a "charge" or a "force" being exerted onto it.

 

[Evil Bunny]

When you have a dry lead acid battery, fresh out of the box... it's useless. No voltage.

When you add the acid to it, what happens?

Does the word "charge" enter the picture at all here?

 

[Dadface]

If you take two parallel metal plates and use connecting wires to join the plates to the poles of a battery then you will have a capacitor that charges exponentially with time. There will be a negative charge build up on the plate connected to the negative pole of the battery and a positive charge build up on the opposite plate.If now the wires are kept in place but the metal plates are removed then you still have a capacitor but of a much smaller capacitance.The charge which is now mainly stored on the ends of the wires will be correspondingly smaller.If the wires are now removed you will still have a capacitor but this time the poles of the battery itself constitute the plates.The charge stored can be calculated from Q=CV where C is the effective capacitance of the battery poles.

 

[Evil Bunny]

If you take two parallel metal plates and use connecting wires to join the plates to the poles of a battery then you will have a capacitor that charges exponentially with time. There will be a negative charge build up on the plate connected to the negative pole of the battery and a positive charge build up on the opposite plate.

What if you only used one plate and connecting wire on (pick a pole, any pole). Would a charge build up on it?

If not, why not?

 

[Dadface]

What if you only used one plate and connecting wire on (pick a pole, any pole). Would a charge build up on it?

If not, why not?

You could have any arrangement at all.If changes are made then the capacitance changes also and this will result in a redistribution of the charge build up.

 

[shoestring]

Here's how I think it works:

At equilibrium each pole will have a certain potential relative to the electrolyte. For example, if the equilibrium potential difference between the pole and electrolyte happens to be 1V, then it "costs" 1 eV to transfer an electron from higher to lower potential. The reason the potential is built up despite this "cost" is that there is a simultaneous release of (in this case) 1 eV from the chemical reaction that transfers an electron from higher to lower potential.

Any conductor attached to the pole is, in a way, like an extension of the pole. At least in the sense that it gets the same potential as the pole, as long as there's no significant voltage drop due to the current when the circuit is closed.