With No Strings Attached

"Couldn't they?" Sorensen asked with a touch of acid in his voice. "Do you know anything about batteries, Mr. Siegel?"

"A little. I'm not an expert on 'em, or anything like that. I'm an electrician. But I know a little bit about 'em."

Sorensen nodded. "Then you should know, Mr. Siegel, that battery-making is an art, not a science. You don't just stick a couple of electrodes into a solution of electrolyte and consider that your work is done. With the same two metals and the same electrolyte, you could make batteries that would run the gamut from terrible to excellent. Some of 'em, maybe, wouldn't hold a charge more than an hour, while others would have a shelf-life, fully charged, of as much as a year. Batteries don't work according to theory. If they did, potassium chlorate would be a better depolarizer than manganese dioxide, instead of the other way around. What you get out of a voltaic cell depends on the composition and strength of the electrolyte, the kind of depolar