Today in my chemistry class my friends and I were talking about what would happen if you swallowed an alkaline battery. Would the hydrochloric acid in your stomach erode the metal of the battery, releasing the base? And if that did happen, would the alkaline and acid nullify each other like they do in other experiments? Would that mean there would be no acid left in your stomach for a while until it makes more? And if so, would your stomach get confused and continue making a larger supply, giving you acid reflux disease?
Please help, my science teacher didn’t give me a satisfying answer and I’m dying for information!
Depends on the battery. A 9 volt would probably not be too pleasant if the contacts were both against interior flesh. AAA and AA 1.5 volt Alkalines should make it through OK if they are steel jacketed. Paper jacketed batteries might be a problem. I’ve had steel jacketed 9 volts go though a complete wash and spin cycle and come out OK, and full of energy.
The acid in your stomach isn’t going to eat through the outer shell of a typical battery before the battery gets passed on down to the rest of your digestive system. If you swallow an alkaline battery, you’re going to poop an alkaline battery. Hope it’s something smaller than a D cell.
If you decided to break open the battery first (or maybe it’s one of astro’s 9 volts and it shorts against your stomach wall, overheats from the excessive current flow, and bursts open :eek: ), the “alkaline” in question is, if I recall correctly, potassium hydroxide, which is rather unfriendly to your digestive system (it’s the stuff they put in some drain cleaners). You seem to have the idea that it’s going to act like tums and just nuetralize the acid in your stomach. I’m thinking more like serious damage to your stomach lining, possibly resulting in death.
The other materials in an alcaline battery are zinc and manganese dioxide. Zinc mixes with your stomach acid and forms a very corrosive compound. Assuming the potasssium hydroxide didn’t do you in, having a bit of zinc stuck in your stomach could eventually lead to an ulcer (and all of the possible complications that go with it, the worst of which is of course death). Pennies are mostly zinc too. Don’t swallow pennies.
I wasn’t sure exactly how dangerous managenese dioxide was, so I did a bit of googling. This is what I found: