This Battery Was Almost Too Dangerous to Exist

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For decades, a high-energy rechargeable battery seemed impossible - until we managed to tame one of the most volatile metals.

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0:00 What’s inside a battery?
4:11 How does a battery work?
7:15 How did we increase battery power?
11:13 The first rechargeable lithium battery
13:29 The Tiny Needles That Kill Batteries
16:06 Goodenough? We can do better
20:07 The birth of the lithium-ion battery
27:10 Why do batteries explode?
29:31 Blowing up a battery

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A massive thank you to Dr Billy Wu, Dr Sam Cooper, Dr Derek Sui, Professor Magda Titirici, Dr Jingyu Feng, Dr Monica Marinescu, Li Ren Thow, Genlin Liu and Sam Riley; and to Professor Guillermo Rein, Dr Harry Mitchell, Hanna Berry, and Dr Nick Kalogeropoulos at Imperial College London for their invaluable contributions to this video. And a big thank you to Conrad Duncan for all his help in pulling everything together.

We’re incredibly grateful to Kurt Kelty and the team at General Motors for their time and expertise.

Thanks also go to Dr Yuzhang Li and Prof Jay Morton Turner for all their help on the project.

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References: https://ve42.co/RefsBatteries

Image References: https://ve42.co/ImgRefsBatt

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Special thanks to our Patreon supporters:

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Writers: Emilia Gyles, Casper Mebius, Gregor Čavlović & Derek Muller
Producer & Director: Emilia Gyles
Editor: Trenton Oliver
Camera Operators: Tas Underwood, Emilia Gyles, Gregor Čavlović & Derek Muller
Animators: Andrew Neet, Emma Wright, Fabio Albertelli, Mike Radjabov & Rokas Viksraitis
Illustrators: Jakub Misiek, Maria Gusakovich, Isaac McRee, Nataly Zhuk & Kaitlyn Chille
Assistant Editor: James Stuart
Researchers: HyoJeong Choi, Aakash Singh Bagga & Gabe Strong
Thumbnail Designers: Ren Hurley, Ben Powell & Abdallah Rabah
Production Team: Rob Beasley Spence & Josh Pitt
Executive Producers: Derek Muller & Casper Mebius
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images, Pond5
Music from Epidemic Sound