July 13th, 2016: Batteries

[Snakeadelic]

I saw a scary kind of battery on my Gallivant Westward! (My neighbor and I go to Portland and a couple other places in Oregon every summer to visit families.) After like six years of sniveling about it, I finally got a chance to go to the "new" Oregon Museum of Science & Industry campus, the one they moved to in 1992. While there I toured the USS Blueback, the last diesel-engine sub in the US fleet until it was decommissioned. The diesel engines could, of course, only be used when the ship was at surface. When underwater, it relied on some downright terrifying batteries! The tour guide described them as lead-acid batteries, and one of the 504 from the belly of the boat had been set up in a little cordoned-off nook. It stood about 3 feet tall and was maybe 12 inches wide and deep. And the note on it says each one of those 504 lead-acid batteries weighs 1200 pounds. I'm astonished the sub could surface at all!