Well, there are lots of comments on the note seven meme on the internet that have lots of people comparing the burnout to a grenade. How is this even remotely similar, though? I also overheard a couple of people the other day saying that they don’t trust lithium batteries and they might replace their phone batteries with a nimh equivalent which would be much heavier and bUlkier. They said that had a friend who was working on his phone when the battery exploded like a sick of TNT and actually blew him to smithereens and there was nothing left of him except for thumb sized bits of flesh scattered around the place.
However, I also saw someone on the internet say that their friends was killed by a acid battery. They said it exploded and a single fragment of shrapnel flew into his jugular and he died.
They weren’t exaggerating, they were serious. There were other people agreeing with them, exclaiming things like “oh my god i know right wow it’s a wonder how we survive at all right all these so called “brilliant inventions” are just soooo dangerous, wow (lol) even the most apparently benign things are reeeeally dangerous wow.” Plus I’ve seen plenty of people say things like that.
First of all, did they have first hand experienced of a grenade explosion for comparison? No. They’re just talking shit. People make stuff up, make things sound bigger and better (or worse) than real life, etc. People on the internet say lots of stuff. Sometimes it’s true.
As for people dying by exploding Lead-acid batteries, that I could believe.
They generate Hydrogen gas when charging, and that can explode and send pieces of the case flying at dangerous speeds.
Lead/acid batteries (like a car battery) give off hydrogen gas, and should it collect in high enough concentration and if there’s a spark (like when you connect jumper cables) you can cause one to explode. That’s why, when jump starting a car, they tell you to make the last connection to a ground away from the battery.
It happened to a friend of mine (not the jugular and dying part, just the exploding part). He had a new car, and on about the 3rd or 4th day, it didn’t start. No electrical power at all. He popped the hood, and wiggled the battery connection. There was a flaw in the battery where one of the post didn’t make a good connection internally, and it went boom. He got an acid bath.
He was at home when it happened, and he had sense enough to run into the shower and rinse off. It missed his face (and eyes), and the only damage was to his clothes. The car also survived, just a little discoloration in the engine compartment.
It looks like OP is gone but there was a fantastic episode of the …fantastic show NOVA that originally aired a few months ago. The show details much of the current state of the art and has a lot of battery explosion footage. It seems to be on youtube.
