Thread: What drains a battery?

Hmm if you want it as a visual aide, perhaps you should put the focus on the fact that there is a mismatch between NT and autism. In your circuit analogy you could either put the wrong rated light bulb on a battery (or indeed capacitor if you want to talk about draining) so it will burn too bright, burn out (that is fitting ) or perhaps too low.

I am not sure though that the self monitoring that you speak of is in itself enough. It's good for those people to know when too much is, well, too much but it is just as necessary to know what their limitations are and inform their surroundings since we already know that their adaptability is limited. So, put a battery and a solar panel in series and see the light bulb shine just right when the autistic person does not need to do all the heavy lifting.

Just a few more thoughts

Cheers,
-P

Originally Posted by BradC

My gut says it'd be easier and more demonstrable to use a water tank rather than electricity.

Originally Posted by austastar

Hi,
May I suggest a capacitor instead of a battery?
It will charge / discharge in minutes and will respond quicker to various loads demonstrated with metering.
Cheers

IMHO, the draining bucket with an aquarium pump refilling it is a better methodology of presenting the issue....

a tall thin container with a hole in the bottom will squirt water quite a way but not for long
a short wide containter with the same size hole in the bottom will squirt water a short way for a longer time.

the tall thing container represents a high voltage battery with low capacity
the short wide container a lower voltage battery with a higher capacity.

The pump that pulls the water back into the container is how well you recharge

the holes down the side represent the loads.

you might have some holes that drain the water out of the system entirely (use a hose so you can adjust where on the container the holes that drain water out of the system plug in)
some holes will drain out of the container into the catchment that has the pump in it so the energy is recycled

draw a line on the containter that represents the level of energy requried to function. IF the waters too low effective functioning ceases. as it creeps up function returns.

I probably havent explained it as well as I think I have, but I hope it helps out.

Originally Posted by BradC

My gut says it'd be easier and more demonstrable to use a water tank rather than electricity.

Or for a car analogy - the fuel tank.

More Effort = more fuel burn (in shorter time)
Limited capacity
Needs time to refuel before going again
Small top ups result in lower average tank level (closer to running empty)
Some days feel like high octane vs poor quality fuel