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How can a battery have different currents but the same voltage?

I understand what voltage is, potential energy, and the pressure along a wire and that current is the flow. But if I have AA, AAA, C, D batteries, and they are all 1.5v, how can they have different amps? Why doesn't 1.5v always produce the same amount of amps?

3 Answers

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  • 8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    It is actually the charge capacities, that makes the difference between your different sizes of batteries. Charge capacity is often rated in ampere-hours.

    All batteries inevitably have an internal resistance to them. They will not produce their nameplate voltage (open circuit voltage) at all currents, because there is inevitably a voltage drop across the internal resistance that you cannot remove. The less internal resistance, the more current a battery can deliver, closer to its theoretical output current for a given resistor.

    Bigger batteries have more area for the contact of the electrochemical reactions, and thus less internal resistance.

  • ?
    Lv 7
    8 years ago

    For a given resistance, the same voltage will produce the same current, IF the power source can supply it. A battery (actually a cell) has internal resistance and a capacity related to its size. As current is drawn, some of the voltage is dropped across the internal resistance so a lower voltage is available for the external circuit.

    A circuit that can be powered by an AAA battery, for example, will operate for a much longer time if it is powered by a D battery instead.

    A device that draws a current of 1 amp from a D battery, with a typical capacity of 8000 mAh, would theoretically last for 8 hours. With an AAA battery, with a capacity of 540 mAh, it would last about 32 minutes. In a practical circuit you would not use an AAA to provide a current of 1 amp.

  • 8 years ago

    In any battery there is an internal resistance(IR) associated with the chemistry.

    the AAA has the highest IR then the AA then the A, B, C and D.

    as the battery gets bigger the effect is like putting the IR's in parallel reducing the resistance and increasing the available amperage or power.

    This is a highly simplified explanation.

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