(I made rhubarb crumble)

For the past few months the husband has been making his own craft project. While there’s no wool or fabric, it is kinda interesting. He’s made an electronic box. That’s not the interesting bit. In the box are some bits and pieces of things you might find in a computer and on the box there’s a place to put an AA battery, there’s also a little screen (picture below). Did I mention before that he likes bargains? Well, he does. Ever since his brother, Liam, taught him the rules of bargain hunting at the supermarket, he’s been bringing home trophies. Sure we don’t need ten bottles of Pino Grigio, or five bags of spinach but they were 50% off.

(The electronic box)

But there was always one product at the supermarket for which there were no rules – batteries. It seems like everything else has a sticker with the per kilo or per litre price and so no matter what weight (or volumn) your chosen bargain is you can see at a glance if it really is a bargain or just looks like a bargain. Batteries have names that indicate their weight. Names like Ultra Power or Plus Power but is one Ultra equal to two Plus? No one knows…… until now.

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(The bits and pieces)

So to the project… Buy lots of different makes of batteries. Put one of each pack into the slot on the electronic box. Turn on the switch. Battery starts giving up its power. Electronic box measures how much power it gives up. When battery’s power is all gone that’s how much power there was in the battery. By the time Denis had tested just ten batteries he knew much more than when he started…

(The victims, now all deceased. Btw the Tesco battery is zinc chloride (I have no idea..) so it wasn’t part of the final analysis)

I don’t understand all the complications of the electronics, the alkaline versus the lithium, the watts versus the joules but the bottom line is….. there’s a difference between one battery and another and it’s nothing to do with the cute names. The entire article is at www.denishennessy.com where you can see which battery we’ll be buying from now on.

Go bargains! Mairead.

PS If you want him to test your favourite battery just send it over and he’ll plug it in!