Before you stock up on 6V lantern batteries to cash in on Lifehacker’s Get 32 AA Batteries from a Single 6 Volt Battery tip, take a gander at the horrifying discovery I made tonight (in a frantic effort to scrounge up enough batteries to power my Pignose amp
Inside a 6 volt Heavy Duty Eveready lantern battery you’ll find batteries all right–four useless batteries roughly 3/4″ longer than a D cell.
Guess you can’t believe everything you read on the internets. (Maybe the title Gagfilms should have tipped me off.)
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
It is not good engineering practice to put 32 “AA” cells in a series/parallel arrangement to achieve the 6 volts and the power output specified by NEMA. However, it certainly is possible in our crazy world today that some overseas battery mfgr may have actually done this. Now, if there was a malfunction of just one of the sets of the 4 “AA” groups it is possible to overheat one of the “AA” cells to the point of explosion (alkaline version). Case in point, we actually had an alkaline “AA” cell explode in a Shure wireless headset tranceiver a few years ago, the battery case got so hot it burned the backside of one of our floor directors.
Actually, after putting some thought into it (and I’m not quite sure why I’m putting thought to it) you can actually arrange 32 AA batteries in such a way to acheive a 6 volt output. By connecting only 4 batteries at a time, you will get 6 volts. With all 32 batteries grouped into 4 battery groups and wired in a parallel circuit, all you will increase is the milliamphour (mAh) output.
However, I measured a Energizer AA battery (2 inch) and also a Rayovac 6 volt battery (roughly 3 9/16 inch) there’s not enough room in the cavity of the 6 volt block to stack 2 AA batteries on top of each other…..
…..unless you can find a 6 volt block that measures a little over 4 inches tall, then you might have something….otherwise it’s just a hoax.
David, when you put it that way the hoax seems pretty obvious doesn’t it?
Lets just figure this out in voltage terms…32 AA batteries (which are 1.5 volts each)that may be packed into a 6 volt battery pack, as the tale it told…..
….doesn’t anyone look at how much voltage 32X 1.5 volt batteries can product if tied into a series circuit?
….I believe if you’d tied all the batteries (32 AA batteries) in a 6 volt “block” you’d get 48 volts of battery power!!!
…..do the math.
Yeah, I just cracked open an Energizer (these things are still Eveready, right?) battery tonight, only to find four individual 1.5V cells in it. They’re slightly narrower than a ‘D’ cell, but almost half again as tall – two of these stacked together are a centimeter shorter than three stacked ‘D’ cells.
And in an added twist, the nubs on top are negative, not positive.
Guess I could use ‘em in pairs in my 3 ‘D’-cell Mag-lite, so it’s not a complete loss.
i got to the store to buy one to see if it was true. but ifigured it was a hoax and saved myself five dollars. wish i woulda seent his and saved myslef the trip.
It would appear that none of you would rather go down in internet video history as hospitalized skateboarders with low IQs.
“Guess you can’t believe everything you read on the internet”???? Well … duh!!
I submit that if this is worthy of your validation “true/false”, then there are a billion more stupid claims out there that require your immediate attention.
Thank God you’re out there to check the truth of what is on the internet.
No really, I mean it.
I opened up a Duracell Coppertom 6 V and found 4 Copertop D cell batteries in it.
Tried with EverReady and the Heavy Duty V6 featured in the film and neither one had the AA batteries. Either the companies no longer make them in this fashion or the original film was a hoax.
I tried this too with Wal-Mart’s house brand of 6V cells.
I got the same result as above 4 la
i got suckered too walgreens
This happened to me too. It’s just this brand of battery. Try a different brand. Gagfilms is just as credible as youtube.