> the only high-voltage work we did was a 5 cell pack of 1.5V AgMnO cells that 
> was boosted by a customer's device to higher voltage (think of what the 
> Invisible Fence collar unit does and you get the idea).

I was thinking of nixies, for some reason.

> My interest is in the physical processes that occur, but most people don't 
> care at all about diffusion-limited reactions,

I do, but I'm not "most people".  I've even written programs to simulate such 
things.  I have some high-drain applications where reaction rate and effective 
resistance are important (think nixie and photoflash boost circuits).  It's 
possible to pull a couple of amperes from AA cells, and several amperes from C 
cells.  I'm find of NiCd cells because they'll give you gobs of current in a 
hurry.

> they just want their flashlight to turn on long enough to get where they are 
> going :)

While I love the glow of neon, and the simple glow of tungsten, there are times 
LEDs are the way to go.  And flashlights are a great place for 'em, IMHO.  With 
an ordinary incandescent bulb, as the battery voltage drops, more and more of 
the energy gets uselessly radiated away as IR.  An LED hooked up to a near-dead 
battery will still give a useful (if feeble) visible glow.  There's even one 
LED flashlight made that runs on a dozen CR123 cells in parallel.  If you give 
it new cells, it'll run continuously for weeks/months.  But the real value of 
it is, you can take a bunch of the "dead" ones from your other equipment, and 
they'll run the flashlight just fine.

Then again, the neon "do-nothing" box would run happily for quite some time 
from a couple dozen "dead" CR123s in series (just to get sort of back on topic).

- John

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