One of the benefits of living in a modern society is letting other people worry about building all the stuff we use–like cars or blenders or cell phones. After all, do you really know what’s going on inside an internal combustion engine or how your juicer works? Well, okay, actually, you might know, but even so, it’s fair to say that the average person probably doesn’t have a very clear idea of how all their appliances–kitchen or otherwise–were actually put together.
And there’s nothing wrong with that! That’s the whole point of living in a society–DIYers and insane survivalists aside–specialization is what lets us have so much cool stuff. But sometimes our ignorance can lead to certain, um, embarrassing situations, as one Japanese Twitter user recently learned.
The photo above was tweeted by Japanese Twitter user (Twitterer? Tweeter? Tweettwitterer?) Gorochan, accompanied by the message below.
This Chinese-made batter made a loud rattling sound and broke apart….and then…I found all these button batteries inside. Doing stuff like that is how fires and breakage happens!
https://twitter.com/x_gorochan_x/status/456812519504367618/
“Well, he’s kind of got a point,” you might be thinking now, but before you head down to the comment section to agree with Gorochan, there are a few reply tweets that you should read first. For example @syuunai wrote this response:
Leaving aside that it broke open, it’s normal for small, high voltage batteries to have a number of button batteries packed inside of them. If you open up the Panasonic 4LR44 (6V) batteries, you’ll find 4 LR44 batteries inside.
@x_gorochan_x 破裂はともかく、小型高電圧の電池にボタン電池が複数入ってるのは普通ですよ。Panasonicの4LR44(6V)とかも分解するとLR44が4個入ってますし。
— しゅーあに🥕🔯 (@syuuani) April 17, 2014
Wait, what? We’re not sure what’s more amazing–that we never knew this or that @syuunai seems to be a walking, talking, tweeting battery dictionary. But it looks like he’s not the only battery expert! Here are two more tweets from Japanese netizens explaining that it’s nothing unusual to have button batteries packed into smaller batteries:
Japanese batteries have button batteries inside of them, too.
日本製でも中身がボタン電池なものものもの
— どぅーん☆ (@DoonCry) April 17, 2014
It’s become kind of a trend to say that the button batteries that came out of the Size 5 dry batteries is because they were Chinese made. But the 12V batteries which are the same size as the Size 5 batteries, have 8 1.5V alkaline button batteries inside of them!
トレンドに単5乾電池が破裂して中からボタン電池が出てきてこれだから中国製は！みたいなツイートが上がってるけど、そもそも単5と同サイズの12V電池は中に1.5Vのアルカリボタン電池が8個入ってるんだけど。
— カポにゃん(880歳ぐらい) (@caponyan) April 17, 2014
Apparently this is what some batteries look like on the inside. To be honest, though, we never had any idea! This somehow makes them seem a lot more dangerous, doesn’t it? Like they’re just waiting to explode the next time you turn on your pen flashlight!
▼Battery Inception!
See, you really do learn something new every day! It’s not the most important piece of trivia you’ll ever learn, we suppose, but it’s still cool to know! Of course, if you’re planning on using this as a party trick–please don’t! First, apparently not every brand of battery is assembled this way. And, second, disassembling batteries is dangerous!! You could get battery acid on yourself or start a fire, so please do not try to take them apart.
▼Someone who didn’t listen to our warning! Fortunately, their face wasn’t burned off.
So, let this be a lesson to you, dear reader: Try googling with Yahoo! before tweeting over Facebook, or you might get things all mixed up. And that would be embarrassing!
Sources: Naver Matome, Twitter
Images: Minkara, Twitter