Thanks, everyone, for their input. I now have a new perspective to go hash over. Maybe one thing to take away from this is that you can't necessarily read into a given battery voltage reading what you might think you can.
To look at this from another angle, suppose you have a battery that's gone above the gassing voltage for a given temperature (2.35V/cell with temp compensation). So the battery should not be accepting anymore charge, just blowing off the input energy in heat and gassing. From practical experience, it will take more amps to produce a given voltage on a warm battery than a cold one in this state. Eventually, you get to thermal runaway, where the voltage of the battery starts going down, and those automatic chargers that we've all grown to love (and hate) will start pumping in more current to try and bring the voltage up. Vicious circle. Can I look at this situation (when we're above gassing voltage) the same way as when the battery is actually accepting charge below the gassing voltage? Still an Ohm's law case (it has to be)? Maybe I need to knock my head against the wall like I did back in Calculus and Quantum Mechanics - finally came up with a way I liked it (more so with C than QM). Chuck Hursch Larkspur, CA www.geocities.com/nbeaa
