My TV remote control is one of the many millions around the world that doesn’t have that little click in piece of plastic that covers the batteries, it came off years ago. Well about 5 mins ago I went to pick up the remote and I almost burnt my finger on one of the batteries (they are AAA’s). I turned the remote over to investigate and when I went to dislodge one of the batteries, I confirmed that indeed it was the battery that was hot. Now we have had this remote for YEARS, and never has this happenned, they have always been just been at normal room temperature.
And I don’t mean that these batteries are warm, they are literally that hot they could burn you if you touched them too long.
It’s not the weather, by the way, it’s only about 22 C at the moment.
I have removed the batteries and put them at a distance, and as I finish off this post they are starting to cool down, but what is the problem? I am too scared to put them back in…
I used to overheat paper clips by touching their ends to the two poles in the battery pack out of a used Polaroid film cartridge. I would assume something similar has happened in your remote control–you have a short.
The electrons just race uncontrollably through the conductor, agitating them endlessly to a higher heat.
The same thing happened to our remote, Doc. My hubby thinks it was an integrated circuit that fried itself. When I put the batteries back in, they didn’t get hot again, but the remote didn’t work. You may be reduced to (gasp!) turning the TV on and off by hand from now on.
This is why most electronics devices have built in fuses. A short circuit inside draws heavy current from the batteries. After the shorted component draws enough current that it burns itself open, no current flows through the device- ever again. The remote is almost certainly dead, but you can get a replacement from the manufacturer (expensive) or try 1-800-REMOTES and see if they have what you need.
Or you could make the kids change the channels for you. That’s what my dad used to do in the olden (pre-remote control) days. “Hey! Change it to the news, will ya?” Of course, in those days, we only had 4 or 5 channels – it might be child abuse to station your kid by the tube long enough to surf a modern cable or satellite network.
If I were you, I’d buy a new remote. If you haven’t bought one in a while you may not know that a basic universal-remote can be had for less than $10.00.
And if you want a theory about what might have happened – it could be that, because you have no battery cover, one fell out and someone put it in backwards.
But it would have had to just have happened, AAA batteries just don’t have the juice to generate that kind of current for more than a couple of minutes.
Many batteries will just get a little warm when shorted, it depends on the characteristics.
The ones that are most risky are rechargeables because they have a very low internal resistance which can allow large currents to flow. These can, in extremis, go >pop< sometimes with quite a bang.
Alkaline batteries will usually get fairly hot but the current gets limited by the internal resistance increasing as the temperature rises so they are, to a certain extent, self limiting.
Zinc batteries get slightly warm and thats about it.
I imagine that lithium batteries can cause problems as they are designed to provide short bursts of high current.
Your remote unit sounds like it has either a short circuit or a battery the wrong way round.Very rarely a battery can develop an internal fault which can cause this.
The only way to know is to replace the batteries and see what happens, it does sound rather as if the remote is dead, gorn to meet its maker, joined the choir invisibule, curled up its toes, is orf the peg, and that all statements to the effect that this remote is a going concern are now rendered obsolete, this is an ex-remote
Its f#8@in snuffed it.
My remote is also missing the battery cover, and I’ve come home to find the batteries in backwards several times, with the batteries nice and toasty warm. Luckily, the remote still works. Of course, finding the batteries in backwards is better than having to look under the couch for them, which is the usual case.
When I was stationed at Fairchild AFB in northwestern Washington state, it could get very, very cold in wintertime. If it was very cold and we were working on something you couldn’t do right with gloves on, we’d fabricate makeshift hand warmers by plugging two 9v batteries (the little rectangular ones) together and stuffing them in our pockets. When your hands got too cold, you’d reach in your pocket and grab the “hand warmer” until you could stand to expose your hands to the cold again.
This worked pretty well, too. Once your hands were warm (and likely to stay that way a while), you’d disconnect them to keep from running them down too much, so I don’t know if they’d explode if you left 'em connected together for very long (these were “regular” batteries – not alkalines).
Stop changing the channels so fast! If you are clicking through more than one channel every fifteen seconds you are both reducing your comprehension and over working your remote. Find a showing of “War and Peace” and give the thing a break.
that is way too fucking badass, Baloo. MacGuyveresque, even.
As to batteries shorting, can anyone give truth or lie to this story my physics teacher told-
A fellow was supposedly killed, back when calculators were first introduced. They were big bulky deals with light up l.e.d.s, not LCDs, and drew huge amounts of current. So one dude carried his in his breast pocket, and jammed his pen into the same pocket on the way to class.
The metal pen short circuited the battery, overheating it and causing it to -pop- and drive a fragment of the pen into his chest. pierced his heart.
this was a supposedly one of the few men to have been killed by a calculator.
Put a piece of duct tape over the back of the remote to hold the batteries in?
You can also use a Barbie oven door, held in place by a rubber band, although this tends to cause friction in the family. “Sweetie, Barbie doesn’t need to use the oven, she’s got the microwave. Or she can send Ken out for pizza…”
Your physics teacher needs to give you a cite before I would swallow this fish tale. I’m 42 and I was there for the move from slide rules to pocket calcs in Jr Hgh and HS.
The first pocket calcs were either little 4 fuction units (Omron and Casio etc. spring to mind) or somewhat larger scientific units, not much wider or longer than current units, but much thicker for the LED display and rechargable battery.
HP pretty much owned the initial scientific calculator market and the battery pack(s) were completely encased in the unit and the power plug was recessed well into the unit. The units were very expensive and came with belt hung, carrying cases and were rarely if ever carried in a pocket due to the bulk.
Also LEDs do not draw “huge” amounts of current. Their current demands are quite modest. It’s simply that they are “huge” compared to the vanishingly small amount LCD’s use to function.
As an ex-Radio Shack manager in my youth I’ve seen battery packs pop and it can be pretty violent. The aforesaid pack might get hot and possibly “blow” under extreme circumstances, but how a “pen” is going to “short circuit” a completely encased battery pack that no self respecting nerd would have carried in his “pocket” anyway is beyond me.
The BSometer is registering a 9.95 out of 10.
