[qwery]

If you know a bit about electronics, you might be a bit surprised by the term 'solid-state battery'. It's a poor analogue to the more common usage of solid-state with semiconductors, integrated circuits, etc. -- a "solid-state" cell is still a chemical cell. It's not a paradigm shift on the level of, say, replacing a relay with a MOSFET.

[jhallenworld]

I think "solid-state" is a marketing term which means you need to use Fermi-Dirac statistics to model your device, vs. vacuum tubes where you can use Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics. I think you can use Maxwell-Boltzmann at least for the ions in the electrolyte.. but maybe have to use for Fermi-Dirac for all conductors in a solid-state battery.

[inigyou]

I thought it meant your database was singly responsible, open for extension but closed for modification, Liskov substitutable, interface segregated, and dependency inverted.

[jojobas]

Non-solid-state batteries have liquid/gel electrolyte.

[qwery]

Wood is a solid-state battery.

The term has obviously been selected because of how revolutionary solid-state electronic devices were/are. And it's not like they selected it after a revolutionary energy storage device was introduced. Solid-state batteries (cells) are an incremental improvement, at best.

And because this is the web: I am not being negative about the technology. I happen to be of the radical opinion that incremental improvements are good, actually.

[jojobas]

The word "battery" is a stand-in for electrochemical cell, which wood obviously isn't. Quite some advantages are expected from batteries that don't involve liquids or gels, whether incremental or not.

[qwery]

I don't know what more I can say to convince you that I'm not trying to put down the technology. I'm interested in it, that's why I think it's a shame to curse it with a used-car salesman marketing name.

As for wood batteries,

Most usage of the term 'battery' is independent of technology, outside of usually wanting electricity as the interface. The fact that most batteries people talk about happen to be electrochemical cells is incidental -- it's irrelevant to whatever they are actually talking about. So yes, a lot of the time 'battery' happens to refer to electrochemical cells, but it also refers to energy storage devices in general, which wood obviously is.

The problem with wood being a "solid-state battery" is surely the solid-state part.

Q: I mean how does that even work, solid-state combustion?

A: No, it's still obviously a normal chemical cell. You do a chemistry and these special "electrodes" turn the result into electricity.

Q: Can you recharge it?

A: Well, not in your own home, but in your backyard, maybe sort of.

If we are to use the term 'solid-state' to refer to anything that is solid, as in "solid-state battery", and we can get electricity from burning wood, I don't see the problem with referring to wood as a solid-state battery.

[jjk166]

> Most usage of the term 'battery' is independent of technology, outside of usually wanting electricity as the interface. The fact that most batteries people talk about happen to be electrochemical cells is incidental -- it's irrelevant to whatever they are actually talking about. So yes, a lot of the time 'battery' happens to refer to electrochemical cells, but it also refers to energy storage devices in general, which wood obviously is.

Wood isn't an energy storage device. You can't have a piece of wood where the energy has been depleted. There is no device. Wood is the stored energy - it's a fuel. You consume it in some device, like a furnace, to generate energy.

[jojobas]

You're trying to put down the terminology and it's both unhelpful and incorrect.

[adolph]

There is a nine box chart with x-axis of doctrine or how it is used and y-axis of structure; each axis has three values, purist, neutral and radical.

For the purist in doctrine and structure, wood is not a battery. If one is somewhere between neutral and radical, then wood is a battery that was built by its integrated disposable solar cells.