• j4k3@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    38
    ·
    2 months ago

    It appears that explosive batteries are a thing. Name a battery powered device.

    vibrator…

      • j4k3@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 months ago

        Ya know that for sure? I don’t mean some lithium chemistry. The simpler solution is obviously to use a traditional chemistry. I’ve been speculating recently that it is likely possible to make a single use battery from an explosive. A battery is just exploiting oxidation like reactions with the galvanic potential of metals. Explosives are basically unstable stuff with lots of potential combined with a rapid oxidiser. The two uses have quite a lot in common. I bet there is a bunch of untapped potential in this space where little research is done in the public sphere.

        • r00ty@kbin.life
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          2 months ago

          I suspect explosions from battery chemistry would be too slow compared to what was seen with these pagers, and power derived from an explosive compound that would be this deadly with such a small footprint wouldn’t be good for a pager (and probably not effectively rechargeable at least). Not to say if they wanted to hide things, they could install a smaller battery with the rest of the volume made up by some form of plastic explosive. I just don’t think there’s a battery chemistry in use right now that will both generate a suitable amount of power and also go from stable to boom in the speeds we saw with this attack.

          I find it far more likely they had a small amount of plastic explosive (perhaps hidden as part of the battery).

          But who knows in reality? Well except Mossad :P

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          The trick is that explosives react to form pretty much exclusively gasses. That’s where the boom comes from - suddenly you have gasses at the density of a solid, and clearly that corresponds to a lot of pressure by PV=nRT, as well as just common sense about how heavy gas normally is. Batteries tend to be full of stuff that doesn’t like to be gas, so you get more of a firey, sparky effect than “poof”.

          The explosions pictured look very clean, and at this point it has pretty much come out how they made booby trapped devices seem like a legit product that Hezbollah should buy.

    • refalo@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      Batteries don’t explode, they burn.

      But actual explosives were planted in the mentioned devices.

      • SeattleRain@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        2 months ago

        There’s emerging evidence that it wasn’t explosives and might have been the battery. And there’s certainly been reports of exploding batteries injuring people to similar degrees.

        Regardless I think this is going to effect western made electronics sales and be an attack methodology that’s leaked and used against Americans forcing them to actually pay attention to Israel.