Thread: What drains a battery?

Hello All,

One of my other PowerPoint slides involves a combination of the old Smith's 'Econo' or fuel economy gauge, a rev meter, temperature gauge, and a speedometer and different approaches to driving up a hill - such as the old Toowoomba Range. See the approach to the range, put your foot flat to the floor in high range and keep the foot there. This is some people on the Autism spectrum's approach to socialisation or something they are anxious about in life. An approach that tended to fill up the stopping points 3/4 up the Range with cars with their bonnets up and steam pouring out. Or dead cars at the peak near the service station. With subsequent dire fuel consumption, excessive strain on the motor on top of the unhappy cooling system.

Alternatively, monitoring the revs, selecting an appropriate gear, changing down a gear if the revs get too high. Not straining the motor or the cooling system. Have a semi-respectable fuel economy and being able to crest the Toowoomba Range and proceed merrily off towards Warwick, Oakey or Highfields. While you wave to the try-hards with their bonnets up and steam and water gushing out of their car's radiators.

Of course the other alternative is to lubricate oneself in preparation for the social event. Consume some Dutch courage. However, we will not go there.

So, examples of batteries and cars - could I be a petrol head?

Kind regards
Lionel

Originally Posted by Lionelgee

Hello All,

If there was a simple circuit that involved a AA battery connected by two wires and a light bulb - would it be the amperage used to illuminate the light bulb - the load or draw, that drains the battery until it loses charge and becomes flat?

To accurately monitor the state of the battery, would a volt gauge and an amp gauge added to the circuit identify the amount of current loss - drain and the remaining capacity of the battery?

Am I using the correct or the incorrect terms? If I am using the incorrect terms - which ones should I use?......

IIRC my mechanic's auto-electrician told him never to fit an ammeter to a car as they can cause a fire. A voltmeter will show you the state of charge of the battery.

ITs a balancing act.

A volt meter will show you the batteries potential to do work
An amp meter will show you how hard the battery is working

Both these together show you the total amount of work being achieved. A Watts meter shows you this in one shot.

A special kind of impedance meter will show you the batteries capacity to work.

You really need to have at least 2 values to work out whats going on and what can be achieved.

theres no point in knowing only the volts of a battery if you dont know how much current it can produce. For example an A27 battery from my remote has a 12v potential. But as its smaller than a normal AA battery I couldnt use one to start my car.

https://www.build-electronic-circuit...on-cropped.jpg

To put that diagram into social context.

Volts are a persons desire to go be social
Ohms are the pressures of being social
Amps is how fluidly and far a person gets being social.

(this doesnt really work in the real world as the more resistance a circuit has the longer it takes the battery to drain)


to convert it loosely into a more visible version.

A volt meter shows you what the vehicles top speed could be
An amp meter shows you how long its been going for
the impedance meter shows you how big the fuel tank is and how large the fuel hose is that delivers the fuel to your engine.

A watts meter is kind of like a timer and odometer in one.

using the very rough anology above...

you cant tell how far a car has gone or can go if the only thing you're told is that the car is doing 120KPH
You cant tell how fast or far the car can go if all you know is that the fuel tank holds 75l

Interesting attempt at an analogy but I am not sure it works as blknight kinda pointed out in his example regarding ohms. Socializing and other NT skills (Neuro Typical) drain energy indeed but I would simply suggest that it is a limited resource, not sure the whole battery volts and amps thing works here. There is more however of importance, the fact that you actually need to do the work. I think I would compare it to a CPU, the brain is in effect a CPU. You only have so many CPU cycles available unless you overclock the unit, which will cause it to heat up excessively. If you make the CPU a laptop running on battery power you can see that loading up the CPU will drain the battery faster. Also:

When you use up CPU cycles for socializing, you can not use them for something else.
socializing for people with autism usually means emulating behaviour they see in others by making use of their usually above average intelligence. Emulation is not efficient use of a CPU.
when successfully applying NT emulation (since it is not a natural skill an autistic person can ever have) this will over time reduce the amount of energy needed, but it will never become efficient.

ergo, when people with autism are capable of function in a NT world they will do so at a cost since in the end the person will find an equilibrium between energy expended and perceived gain. This cost may even be that some of their autistic super powers (hyper focus etc) may be lost since they are quite busy internally running the NT emulation program.

Cheers,
-P

If Lionel wanted to stay car analogy then…

It’s like fuel and engine load.
Work harder, more fuel + more heat (EGTs)

Tank eventually runs out and needs time to fuel up again.


(I don’t think this is an isolated issue. Even those who are
Not on a spectrum can find dealing with others mentally exhausting.

It sounds like running a car and all its accessories with too small of an alternator to keep the battery charged up.

If you don’t turn off the additional energy draining loads (in this case social interaction), the volts continue to drop and eventually there is not enough charge left to even keep basic functions running.

And the more times and deeper you run that battery down, the less charge it can hold until a new battery is needed (burn out).

If only life was as simple.

Good luck with your analogy Lionel - it is a complex area. I sometimes think the D3 is on the spectrum.

Hello Dave, Prelude, Tombie and DiscoDB,

Thank you for taking the time to very considerately answer my questions and posting them up as replies. I greatly appreciate it. I am an ex-TAFE Trade Teacher and I wanted include a visual aide in a presentation to attendees at a future wellbeing training event that I could be holding. You know teachers and their visual aides! It is a hard habit to shake off.

Anyway, I thought it would be easy enough to hook up a piece of ply that held a small battery, a couple of wires and a light bulb. Then I could describe how with a constant drain on the battery will cause the battery to go flat and the light not to work. Then have another piece of ply with the same circuit and a couple of el-Cheapo gauges hooked into the circuit. Even though, just like the first circuit that was demonstrated; human beings don't come with inbuilt gauges. However, we can learn skills in self-monitoring and be able to assess, or 'gauge' our levels of energy. On a low energy day we should do less demanding tasks. On high energy days we can attempt more high energy task. Where attempting to do high energy tasks on a low energy day can damage us. In the case of a chronic illness doing high energy tasks on a low energy day can trigger the chronic illness symptoms.* The ability to self-monitor is also known as developing a Dialectic Self*. However, that is another story for another time.

I could then have a third piece of ply with a rechargeable battery and the solar panel nicked off a garden light. Where being able to self-monitor your level of wellbeing performs the same role as a solar panel in the example of the light circuit.

I figure most people know what a light bulb and battery are. Also, most people have been in a car or perhaps a bus. The example of a Smith's Econo gauge, rev, temperature and fuel gauge would have to be a series of different PowerPoint slides. As much as I would love to roll in a V8 motor with a complete test panel with all the gauges possible mounted on a frame at a presentation - it might be hard to claim as carry-on baggage or checked luggage on a plane!

Yes, I am aware that Autism is not an illness. However, it does share aspects of energy fluctuations and the incorrect expenditure of energy that can exacerbate the clinical symptoms of Autism that Charmaz's* field of chronic illness research introduces to us. In the case of Autism, the incorrect expenditure of energy can trigger either burnout or a meltdown. The continued drain of energy can equally diminish wellbeing in people such as disability advocates who can become their own worst enemies. This is due to their dedication to their work and the cost it can brings such as their high susceptibility towards things like Vicarious Trauma can have on them.

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* Charmaz, K. (1997). Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time. Rutgers University Press.

Kind regards
Lionel

I'd keep it simple. Perhaps you could talk about the 'level of the battery'

It might be useful to have a low wattage bulb, and a brighter bulb - to demonstrate different rates of energy use from the same battery. I don't know much about autism - but I suspect that there are some social situations that have a low energy draw, and some that have a higher energy draw - reducing the level of the battery more quickly. Both can make the battery flat, one just does it quicker.

It's true that for some battery chemistries, if the level gets too low, then its maximum potential 'level' can be reduced - but again, going for simplicity - perhaps the idea is just that if too much energy is consumer by overwhelming social situations, then it just takes longer to recharge back to being 'full'.

If too much for too long without recharge then you get a flat battery - I have no idea of the consquence for someone with autism to running our of energy for social interaction ... but I'm sure you could describe that.